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eginnings 
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1701-1726   * 


Sdwin  Oviaii 


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Digitized  by  the  Internet  Arciiive 

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http://www.archive.org/details/beginningsofyaleOOoviaiala 


THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  YALE 


Published  on  the  Foundation 

Established  in  Memory  of 
HERBERT   A.    SCHEFl^EL 

OF  THE  Class  of  1898,   Yale  College 


THE  BEGINNINGS 
OF  YALE 

(1701-1J26) 

By  Edwin  Oviatt 

Illustrated  by  Theodore  Diedricksen,  Jr. 


NEW  HAVEN:    YALE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

LONDON:    HUMPHREY  MILFORD 

OXFORD  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

MDCCCCXVI 


Copyright,  1916 

BY 

Yale  University  Press 


First  published  October,  1916 


THE  HERBERT  A.  SCHEFTEL 
MEMORIAL  PUBLICATION   FUND 

The  present  volume  is  the  second  work 
published  by  the  Yale  University  Press  on 
the  Herbert  A.  Scheftel  Memorial  Publica- 
tion Fund.  This  foundation  was  established 
January  12,  19 15,  by  a  gift  to  Yale  Uni- 
versity by  Mrs.  Herbert  A.  Scheftel,  of 
New  York,  in  memory  of  her  husband,  a 
member  of  the  Class  of  1898,  Yale  College, 
who  died  September  12,  19 14:  "in  recog- 
nition of  the  affection  in  which  he  always 
held  Yale  and  in  order  to  perpetuate  in  the 
University  the  memory  of  his  particular 
interest  in  the  work  of  the  Yale  University 
Press." 


PREFACE 

A  surprisingly  small  number  of  books  on  Yale  University 
are  accessible  to  us.  President  Clap's  quaint  "Annals"  of 
1766  can  now  be  consulted  only  in  the  few  rare  copies  that 
have  survived;  Ebenezer  Baldwin's  dry  compilation  of  1831 
has  long  been  out  of  date;  President  Woolsey's  fine  Anniver- 
sary Address  of  1850  is  no  longer  in  general  circulation; 
the  late  William  L.  Kingsley's  monumental  "Yale  College" 
was  published  as  long  ago  as  1879.  These  old-time  books, 
together  with  a  few  chapters  in  Bagg's  "Four  Years  at 
Yale"  (now  out  of  print),  and  Professor  Dexter's  brief 
epitome  of  the  University's  history,  together  with  such  other 
narratives  as  may  be  found  in  periodicals  and  in  American 
college  history  compilations,  comprise  practically  all  that 
has  appeared  in  book  form  regarding  Yale  history.  Much 
fresh  material  concerning  these  bygone  days  has  come  to 
light,  of  course,  since  1879.  Professor  Dexter's  researches, 
for  instance,  have  brought  out  new  facts  and  revised  old 
statements.  Delvers  into  Yale's  past  must  needs  become 
acquainted  with  his  numerous  papers  in  the  publications  of 
the  New  Haven  Colony  Historical  Society,  with  his  exhaust- 
ive collection  of  facts  in  his  "Yale  Biographies  and  Annals," 
and  with  his  "Documentary  History  of  Yale  University," 
to  be  published  this  year.  Anson  Phelps  Stokes'  "Me- 
morials of  Eminent  Yale  Men,"  published  in  19 14  by  the 
Yale  University  Press,  has  brought  together  a  great  amount 
of  hitherto  scattered  information  regarding  a  number  of 
graduates  of  the  early  days.  Colonial  town  records  have 
become  much  more  accessible  during  these  thirty-five 
years;  letters  and  diaries  have  been  discovered  and  pub- 


X  Preface 

lished;  new  treatment  has  been  given  the  whole  Colonial 
period  by  numerous  scholars,  including  our  own  Professors 
Fisher,  Andrews,  and  Walker.  As  a  result,  much  that  had 
previously  been  accepted  as  true  (as  stated  by  such  supposed 
authorities  as  Clap  and  President  Quincy  of  Harvard  and 
his  school  of  followers)  has  had  to  be  revised.  The  present 
writer  has  spent  many  an  off-duty  hour  poring  over  these 
original  sources,  ransacking  town-record  offices  and  town 
and  church  histories,  and  visiting  the  scenes  where  Yale 
had  its  beginnings.  Where  considerable  portions  of  this 
book  give  the  modern  understanding  of  certain  epochs  in 
Yale  history,  I  presume  that  these  latter-day  corrections 
of  the  old  views  are  responsible.  Where  I  have  given 
perhaps  a  new  interpretation  to  certain  other  movements 
in  this  history,  no  one  may  be  called  to  account  but  myself. 
Mr.  Diedricksen's  illustrations  for  this  book  should  form 
not  the  least  interesting  and  useful  feature  of  it.  Most 
of  them  have  been  drawn  from  ancient  woodcuts  and 
photographs;  where  an  imaginary  reconstruction  has  been 
attempted,  only  myself  may  be  blamed  for  such  anachro- 
nisms as  may  have  crept  in. 

It  has  been  my  plan  to  treat  the  several  Colonial  periods 
covered  by  these  chronicles  in  such  a  way  that  one  might 
first  renew  his  acquaintance  with  the  broad  events  of  the 
times,  and  then  follow  the  participants  of  the  several  acts  of 
the  drama  in  a  perhaps  more  intimate  way  against  that 
background.  These  three  main  periods  are:  the  Davenport 
epoch,  during  which  New  Haven  was  founded  as  a  Separa- 
tist church-state  and  attempts  at  a  college  were  made;  the 
Pierpont  period,  during  which  the  Collegiate  School  was 
founded  and  carried  on  at  the  modern  Clinton  and  the  old 
Saybrook;  and  the  Andrew-Cutler-Edwards  era,  during 
which  Yale  College  was  established  and  took  root  at  New 
Haven.    It  is  a  coincidence,  but  a  happy  one,  that  this  book 


Preface  xi 

on  these  beginnings  of  Yale  appears  at  the  time  of  the  two- 
hundredth  anniversary  of  this  latter  event.  That  these 
easy-going  pages  may  serve  to  give  something  at  least  of 
that  new  realization  of  how  Yale's  beginnings  came  about 
which  the  author  came  to  have  in  writing  them,  is  the  cordial 
hope  of  the  writer. 

Edwin  Oviatt. 

Ogden  Street,  New  Haven,  September  4,  19 16. 


CONTENTS 


PART  I 
John  Davenport  and  His  New  Haven  College 


John  Davenport      .... 

The  New  Haven  Colonists    . 

The  New  Haven  Church-State 

The  Davenport  Education 

Davenport's  New  Haven  College 

The  Downfall  of  the  New  Haven  Republic 


Chapter 

I. 

Chapter 

n. 

Chapter 

HI. 

Chapter 

IV. 

Chapter 

V. 

Chapter 

VI. 

PAGE 

3 

18 

30 
52 
70 
86 


Chapter 

I. 

Chapter 

II. 

Chapter 

III. 

Chapter 

IV. 

Chapter 

V. 

Chapter 

VI. 

Chapter 

VII. 

PART  II 

The  Founding  of  the  Collegiate  School 


Connecticut  after  1664 
New  Haven  and  James  Pierpont  . 
The  Need  of  a  Colony  College  . 
The  "Founding"  by  the  Ministers 
The  General  Assembly  Charter  . 
The  Saybrook  Organization  . 
Abraham   Pierson 


105 
117 
134 
148 
172 
192 
205 


Chapter 

I. 

Chapter 

II. 

Chapter 

III. 

Chapter 

IV. 

Chapter 

V. 

PART  III 

The  Collegiate  School  and  Yale  College 


The  Killingworth  Beginnings        ....  223 

Saybrook   Days 245 

The  Connecticut  Colony  in  1701-1714     .      .  259 

The   Saybrook   Platform 277 

The  Gifts  of  Books 289 


XIV 


Contents 


PAGE 

Chapter      VI.  The  Struggle  for  a  Site 304 

Chapter    VII.  The  Beginnings  at  New  Haven     ....  324 

Chapter  VIII.  "Yale  College"  at  New-  Haven  ....  344 

Chapter      IX.  Rector  Cutler 369 

Chapter        X.  The  New  Haven  of  Timothy  Cutler       .      .  381 

Chapter      XI.  The  Result  of  the  Books 396 

Chapter    XII.  The  End  of  an  Era 413 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

The  Granting  by  the  Deputies  of  the  Collegiate 

School  Charter^  October,  1701        .  .     Frontispiece 

An  imaginary  sketch,  based  on  representations  of  the 
Second  Meeting-house  in  standard  New  Haven  histories, 
and  on  costumes  of  the  period.  The  scene  pictures  the 
arrival  of  Deputies  and  members  of  the  Upper  House,  and 
of  James  Pierpont  and  the  other  ministers  with  the  Colle- 
giate School  charter 

The  Davenport  Arms        ......  2 

Crest  and  Arms  of  John  Davenport's  Coventry  family, 
from  Kingsley's   "Yale  College" 

Coventry  in  1600       .......  5 

Ford's  Hospital  Gate,  from  Benjamin  Poole's  "The  History 
of  Coventry" 

Coventry  Free  School       .  .         .         .         .         .7 

From  an  engraving  in  Poole's  "The  History  of  Coventry" 

Magdalen  College  Tower         .         .         .         .         .  11 

From  Loggan's  "View  of  Magdalen  College,  1674,"  and 
from  modern  paintings,  etc. 

London  Spires  ........  17 

From  an  old  English  print,  dated  1616 

Autograph  of  Theophilus  Eaton       .         .         .         .  18 

From  a  letter  by  Davenport  and  Eaton  to  their  friends  in 
Boston,  1638  (the  original  is  in  the  New  York  Public 
Library) 

A  Colonist's  House  at  Lenham,  England  ...  21 

From  a  photograph  owned  by  a  descendant  of  Henri 
Thompson,  Gent.,  who  owned  this  house  in  the  17th 
Century.  The  Anthony  Thompson  of  colonial  New  Haven 
is  said  to  have  been  born  here.  The  house,  which  is  still 
standing,  is  not  far  from  London 


xvi  Illustrations 


PAGE 

The  "Hector" 22 

From  contemporaneous  pictures  of  17th  Century  English 
ships 

Autograph  of  John  Harvard     .....  24 

f  From  Avery's  "History  of  the  United  States" 

The  First  Quinnipiac  Winter  .....  26 

This  imaginary  reconstruction  is  based  on  drawings  of 
similar  pioneer  huts  in  Isham  and  Brown's  "Early  Con- 
necticut Houses."  The  view  is  from  the  west  side  of 
George  Street  near  Church  Street 

Autograph  of  John  Davenport  ....  28 

Several  letters  by  John  Davenport  are  in  the  possession  of 
Yale  University 

Portrait  of  John  Davenport     .....  29 

From  the  original  painting  in  the  University  Dining  Hall 

Stocks       .........  30 

Based  on  sketches  in  standard  American  histories.  The 
imaginary  reconstruction  of  the  Watch-house  is  based  on 
Levermore's  and  Atwater's  New  Haven  histories.  The 
Stocks  and  Pillory,  and  the  Watch-house  faced  College 
Street  about  opposite  the  present  site  of  Phelps  Hall 

Governor  Eaton's  House  ......  34 

A  crude  woodcut  representation  of  this  chief  dwelling 
house  of  colonial  New  Haven  appears  in  Lambert's  "His- 
tory of  the  Colony  of  New  Haven"  (1838).  Isham  and 
Brown,  in  their  "Early  Connecticut  Houses,"  devote  much 
space  to  a  careful  study  of  this  building  and  to  its  probable 
floor  plan  and  furniture  arrangement.  The  house  stood  on 
the  north  side  of  the  present  Elm  Street,  about  200  feet 
east  of  Orange  Street.  Part  of  the  original  foundation  is 
said  to  be  still  standing  in  the  house  now  on  that  site 

New  Haven  in  1640 39 

Edward  Atwater,  in  his  "History  of  the  Colony  of  New 
Haven"  (1881),  published  a  map  of  the  village  of  this 
period,  based  on   authoritative   researches  in  the  original 


Illustrations  xvii 


PAGE 
allotment  of  land  to  the  planters  made  by  the  late  Henry 
White  of  New  Haven.  For  the  purposes  of  this  book,  the 
Atwater  map  has  been  elaborated  from  much  new  data 
gathered  from  the  New  Haven  Colony  Records,  such  as  the 
probable  designation  of  a  number  of  the  streets  and  main 
"corners,"  etc.  The  stockade  and  gates  are  problematical 
for  this  date  (see  footnote  to  p.  32),  though  the  Colony 
Records  look  that  way 

Training-day  on  the  Market-place,  New  Haven       .  42 

The  details  for  this  drawing  were  studied  from  the  Colony 
Records,  and  from  descriptions  by  such  authorities  on  New 
Haven  history  as  Levermore,  Atwater,  Blake,  etc. 

The  First  New  Haven  Meeting-house      ...  46 

Crude  representations  of  this  church  building  were  pub- 
lished by  Atwater  and  Mr.  Henry  T.  Blake.  The  Colony 
Records  supply  such  details  as  the  location  of  the  cause- 
way and  "Mr.  Davenport's  Walk,"  the  accoutrements  of 
the  soldier,  the  presence  of  a  ladder  at  the  Meeting-house, 
the  drummer,  etc. 

The  Town  Watch  .......  49 

This  imaginary  reconstruction  of  the  New  Haven  stockade 
and  guard  in  1640-1650  is  based  on  the  Colony  Records,  on 
Levermore's  "Republic  of  New  Haven,"  and  on  standard 
representations  of  the  pioneer  Plymouth  Colony  palisade 

A  Guilford  House  in  1660  .....  51 

The  famous  "Stone  House"  of  the  Rev.  Mr.  Whitfield, 
built  partly  for  protective  purposes  against  the  Indians, 
and  still  standing  (though  greatly  altered  from  its  original 
structure)  as  a  public  museum.  An  exhaustive  archi- 
tectural study  of  this  well-known  building  may  be  found  in 
Isham  and  Brown's  "Early  Connecticut  Houses" 

Early  New  Haven  Wharves      .....  52 

The  principal  "landing  place"  of  colonial  New  Haven 
appears  to  have  been  on  the  present  Water  Street,  north  of 
Olive  Street.  The  Colony  Records  contain  numerous  notes 
respecting  the  water  front  at  this  point.  In  the  rear  were 
the  college  "Oystershell-Fields" 


xviii  Illustrations 


PAGE 

The  First  Schoolhouse 57 

In  this  imaginary  reconstruction,  the  schoolhouse  is  given 
the  pyramidal  roof  commonly  adopted  for  most  colonial 
public  buildings  of  the  period.  An  example  may  be  found 
r  in  Whitefield's  "Homes  of  our  Forefathers."  The  Colony 
Records  mention  a  causeway  (corduroy  road)  from  this 
building  to  "Mr.  Perry's  Corner"  (the  present  junction  of 
Church  and  Elm  Streets).  According  to  Mr.  Henry  T. 
Blake,  the  schoolhouse  probably  stood  just  northeast  of 
the  present  United  Church 

Autograph  of  Isaac  Allerton  .....    58 

From  Avery's  "History  of  the  United  States" 

Autograph  of  Ezekiel  Cheever  ....  60 

From  Avery's  "History  of  the  United  States" 

A  New  Haven  Street  in  1650    .....  65 

No  representation  has  come  down  to  us  of  any  New  Haven 
pioneer-period  house  except  of  Governor  Eaton's.  This 
imaginary  sketch  of  a  New  Haven  street  of  this  period, 
therefore,  has  had  to  be  based  on  studies  of  contemporary 
buildings  elsewhere.  For  this  purpose,  Whitefield's  "Homes 
of  our  Forefathers"  and  Isham  and  Brown's  "Early  Con- 
necticut Houses"  have  freely  been  drawn  upon, — a  pro- 
cedure made  possible  by  Mr.  Isham's  statement  that 
pioneer  New  Haven  and  Hartford  dwellings  were  much 
alike,  and  by  the  known  number  of  rooms  in  such  New 
Haven  planters'  houses  as  Thomas  Gregson's.  The  width 
of  the  roadway,  height  of  fences,  presence  of  ladders  (for 
fire  protection),  etc.,  are  drawn  from  the  Colony  Records. 
Lambert  is  authority  for  the  use  of  diamond-paned 
windows  in  at  least  some  of  the  houses.  Atwater's  map 
has  been  used  to  locate  the  relative  positions  of  the  houses 

Interior  of  Schoolhouse  ......  69 

Based  on  similar  representations  in  standard  American 
histories 

Statue  of  John  Harvard  ......  70 

From  a  photograph  of  the  statue  in  the  Harvard  Yard 


Illustrations  xix 


PAGE 

The  Dutch  Arrest  New  Haven  Traders  ...  73 

The  various  details  for  this  drawing  are  based  on  early 
prints  of  New  York  and  of  colonial  shipping,  and  on  books 
on  early  costumes 

Thomas  Gregson's  Corner  of  the  Market-place       .  78 

An  imaginary  reconstruction,  based  on  Atwater's  map,  the 
Colony  Records  (as  to  the  footbridge  and  fences),  and  on 
Isham  and  Brown's  studies  of  contemporary  houses  in 
Hartford  that  fit  the  known  requirements  of  the  Gregson 
house.  Isham  says  of  this,  that  Gregson  had  "a  parlor, 
hall,  and  chambers,  an  arrangement  which  requires  nothing 
more  elaborate  than  the  two-room,  central  chimney  plan." 
The  view  is  up  the  modern  Chapel  Street  from  the  Green 
corner  of  Church  Street 

Autograph  of  Edward  Hopkins  ....  85 

The  University  owns  an  original  letter  by  Edward  Hop- 
kins, to  John  Winthrop,  Sr.,  dated  1636 

Portrait  of  Governor  John  Winthrop      ...  86 

The  original  painting,  by  some  unknown  artist,  is  in  the 
possession  of  descendants  of  Governor  Winthrop  in  New 
York  City.  A  copy,  by  George  F.  Wright,  is  in  the  State 
Capitol  at  Hartford 

Autograph  of  Governor  John  Winthrop  ...  91 

From  "The  Governors  of  Connecticut" 

Thomas  Hooker's  Hartford  House  ....  93 

From  Avery's  "History  of  the  United  States" 

Governor  Leete's  Guilford  House   ....  95 

From  a  woodcut  in  Lambert's  "History  of  the  Colony  of 
New  Haven" 

Autograph  of  Thomas  Hooker  ....         101 

An  original  letter  by  Thomas  Hooker  to  John  Winthrop, 
Jr.,  dated  1636,  is  in  the  University  Archives 


XX  Illustrations 


PAGE 

Governor  Andros'  Coat  of  Arms        .         .         .         .         104 

A  copy  is  in  the  Collections  of  the  Bostonian  Society,  and 
is  reproduced  in  Avery's  "History  of  the  United  States" 

Autograph  of  Governor  William  Leete  .         .         .         105 

^  An  original  letter  by  Governor  Leete  to  John  Winthrop, 

Jr.,  dated  1661,  is  in  the  University  Archives 

Autograph  of  Governor  Andros       .         .         .         .         109 

The  University  possesses  an  original  letter  by  Andros  to 
Governor  Fitz-John  Winthrop,  dated  1687 

A  Hartford  House  in  1660        .         .         .         .         .         Ill 

From  a  drawing  in  Whitefield's  "Homes  of  our  Fore- 
fathers" 

Autograph  of  Gqvernor  Robert  Treat      .         .         .         114 

An  original  letter  by  Governor  Treat  to  Fitz-John  Win- 
throp, dated  1702,  is  in  the  University  Archives 

Portrait  of  James  Pierpont       .         .         .         .         .         117 

The  original  painting,  by  an  unknown  artist,  probably 
painted  in  Boston  in  1711,  is  owned  by  descendants  of  Pier- 
pont in  New  Haven 

Second  Meeting-house,  1685     .....         126 

A  representation  of  this  church  building  may  be  found  in 
Mr,  Blake's  "Chronicles  of  the  New  Haven  Green" 

Governor  Andros  in  New  Haven       .  .         .         .         131 

The  costumes,  etc.,  are  largely  based  on  paintings  by  the 
late  Howard  Pyle 

James  Pierpont's  Chair  and  Table     .         .         .         .         133 

The  original  chair  is  in  the  University  Library  lobby;  the 
table  is  in  the  possession  of  descendants  of  Pierpont  in 
New  Haven,  by  whom  permission  was  given  to  make  this 
sketch  from  it 

Portrait  of  Increase  Mather  .         .         .         .         .         134 

John  Vanderspriet's  original  painting  is  in  the  Massa- 
chusetts Historical  Society  Collections 


Illustrations  xxi 


PAGE 

Harvard  College  in  1700  .         .         .         .         .         .         138 

The  drawing,  adapted  to  this  date,  is  from  a  woodcut  in 
Quincy's  "History  of  Harvard" 

Increase  Mather's  House,  Boston     .         .         .         .         145 

From  Edwin  Whitefield's  "Homes  of  our  Forefathers."  A 
later  sicetch,  showing  the  changes  due  to  modern  business 
needs,  is  to  be  found  in  Porter's  "Rambles  in  Old  Boston" 

Autograph  of  Increase  Mather       .         .         .         .         147 

'  The  original  letter  by  Increase  Mather,  dated  1701,  in 
which  his  scheme  for  the  Collegiate  School  is  suggested,  is 
in  the  University  Archives 

The  Branford  House  Doors     .         .         .         .         .         148 

When  the  parsonage  of  Samuel  Russel  of  Branford  was 
torn  down  in  1836,  these  double  front  doors  were  saved 
and  later  brought  to  New  Haven  and  set  up  in  the  wall  of 
the  private  office  of  the  University  Librarian,  where  they 
now  may  be  seen.  Except  for  having  been  sawn  down  to 
accommodate  the  space  allotted  for  them,  these  historic 
doors  are  in  their  original  condition 

Samuel  Russel's  House,  Branford    .         .         .         .         160 

A  crude  pen  and  ink  drawing  of  this  building  was  made 
about  1836,  and  from  it  have  come  all  later  representa- 
tions 

Autograph  of  Cotton  Mather  .         .         .         .         .         164 

The  University  possesses  an  original  letter  by  Cotton 
Mather,  dated  1714 

Portrait  of  Cotton  Mather      .         .         .         .         .         171 

The  original  painting,  by  Pelham,  is  in  the  Collections  of 
the  American  Antiquarian  Society 

Portrait  of  Judge  Samuel  Sewall     .         .         .         .         172 

A  copy  of  the  original  painting  is  in  the  Collections  of 
the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society 


xxii  Illustrations 


PAGE 

Miles'  Tavern  in  1700 175 

Adapted  from  a  water  color  in  the  possession  of  Gen. 
George  H.  Ford  of  New  Haven,  which  in  turn  was  painted 
from  a  pen  and  ink  sketch  of  the  building  made  around 
1850 

Autograph  of  Samuel  Sewall  .         ,  .         .         .         178 

This  signature  may  be  found  on  an  original  letter  by 
Samuel  Sewall  to  James  Pierpont,  dated  1701,  in  the 
University  Archives 

Autograph  of  Isaac  Addington  .         .         .         .         179 

From  Winsor's  "Narrative  and  Critical  History  of 
America" 

The  Upper  House  Granting  the  Charter  .         .         185 

This  imaginary  scene  in  Miles'  Tavern  depicts  Governor 
Fitz-John  Winthrop  and  his  Council  discussing  the  Colle- 
giate School  charter,  October,  1701.  The  costumes  and 
furniture  are  from  standard  authorities  on  the  period 

Autograph  of  Gershom  Bulkeley  ....         189 

From  the  original  letter  by  Bulkeley  to  the  Collegiate 
School  promoters,  dated  September  17,  1701,  in  which  he 
opposes  the  granting  of  a  charter.  The  letter  is  in  the 
University  Archives 

Autograph  of  James  Fitch         .....         190 

From  the  original  letter  of  gift  to  the  Collegiate  School, 
dated  October  16,  1701,  in  the  University  Archives 

Portrait  of  Secretary  Addington       .         .         .         .         191 

The  original  painting  is  in  the  New  England  Historical 
and  Genealogical  Society  rooms,  Boston 

Autograph  of  Governor  Fitz-John  Winthrop  .         .         192 

The  University  owns  an  original  letter  from  Governor 
Fitz-John  Winthrop  to  Joseph  Dudley,  dated  1704 

The  First  Meeting  of  the  Trustees  ....         195 

Various  portraits  of  ministers  of  the  period,  and  photo- 
graphs  of  contemporaneous   houses   still   standing   in   Old 


Illustrations  xxiii 


PAGE 
Saybrook,  have  been  used  for  this  scene  at  Thomas  Buck- 
ingham's house 

Black  Horse  Tavern,  Saybrook  ....         200 

From  a  photograph  of  the  original  building  still  standing 
in  Old  Saybrook,  kindly  loaned  by  Rev.  Dr.  Samuel  Hart 
of  Middletown,  Conn.     This  house  was  built  in  1665 

Portrait  of  Governor  Fitz-John  Winthrop      .         .        204 

The  original  painting,  by  an  unknown  artist,  is  in  the 
State  Library  at  Hartford 

Abraham  Pierson's  Great  Wainscot  Chair        .         .        205 

This  chair  stands  in  the  President's  room  in  Woodbridge 
Hall;  for  years  it  was  annually  used  by  Yale  Presidents 
at  Commencements 

The  First  Newark  Meeting-house  ....         212 

From  an  old  map  of  Newark,  N.  J.,  published  in  Jonathan 
F.  Stearns'  "First  Church  in  Newark" 

Abraham  Pierson's  Statue  on  the  College  Campus  .        219 

A  replica  of  this  statue  stands  on  the  grounds  of  the 
Morgan  School,  Clinton,  just  east  of  the  site  of  the  Pierson 
parsonage  of  1701-1707.  The  representation,  of  course, 
is  imaginary,  as  no  portrait  of  the  Collegiate  School's  first 
Rector  is  known  to  exist.  This  statue  was  modeled  by  Mr. 
Launt  Thompson 

Autographs   of    the    Collegiate    School's    Original 

Trustees         .......         220 

These  signatures  (in  order)  are  of  James  Noyes,  Israel 
Chauncy,  Thomas  Buckingham  (of  Saybrook),  Abraham 
Pierson,  Samuel  Andrew,  Timothy  Woodbridge,  James 
Pierpont,  Noadiah  Russell,  Joseph  Webb,  and  Samuel 
Russel.  They  are  taken  from  original  autographs  on  a 
group  of  documents  between  1701  and  1716,  in  the  Uni- 
versity Archives,  and  are  here  published  (most  of  them 
for  the  first  time)  with  the  permission  of  the  University 
Library  Committee.  The  only  letter  by  Samuel  Mather 
owned  by  the    University   is   not   in   his   own  handwriting 


xxiv  Illustrations 


PAGE 

The  Yale  Arms  and  Crest        .....        222 

This  Yale  family  coat  of  arms  is  from  "The  Yales  and 
Wales"  by  Rodney  Horace  Yale 

The  Franklin  Mile-stone        .....        223 

*       From  the  original  on  the  Clinton  main  street 

A   Map   of   Killingworth    (Clinton)    Just    Before 

Rector  Pierson's  Day     .....         226 

With  additions  to  bring  it  to  1701,  from  a  blue  print  in 
the  Killingworth  Town  Clerk's  office,  kindly  loaned  by 
Mr.  G.  W.  Jones  of  Clinton,  Conn.  This  map  was 
originally  prepared  from  the  land  allotments  of  Killing- 
worth  in  1665 

The  Killingworth  Meeting-house  in  1701        .         .        229 

From  a  drawing  in  Kingsley's  "Yale  College,"  and  from 
Clinton    documents    describing    the    schoolhouse    of    1703 

Tutor  John  Hart's  Chair        .....         236 

From  a  photograph  taken  in  the  Whitfield  House  historical 
collection  in  Guilford,  Conn. 

Rector  Pierson's  Parsonage  in  Killingworth  .         .         238 

An  imaginary  reconstruction,  based  on  measurements 
made  on  the  ground,  and  from  descriptions  in  Stiles,  etc. 
The  building  itself  is  drawn  from  a  contemporaneous 
house,  still  standing,  in  Madison.  The  site  of  the  well 
was  recently  uncovered  by  the  present  owner.  The  road 
at  the  right  is  the  present  Clinton  main  street.  Rector 
Pierson's  inventory  shows  that  he  had  apple  orchards  and 
tobacco  fields 

Indian  River,  Killingworth,  1707     ....         241 

From  a  drawing  made  on  the  spot;  the  view  is  east, 
looking  up  to  the  Meeting-house  Hill,  from  just  south  of 
the  present  main  street  bridge 

Mr.  Pierson's  Cider-cup   ......         244 

From  the  original  on  exhibition  in  the  University  Library 


Illustrations  xxv 


PAGE 

The  Pierson  Grave-stone  .....        245 

Drawn  from  the  original 

The  Lord  House,  Old  Saybrook        ....        248 

From  a  photograph  loaned  by  Rev.  Dr.  Samuel  Hart  of 
Middletown,  an  authority  on  Saybrook  history.  The  house 
is  still  standing  and  was  built  in  1665 

The  Collegiate  School  at  Saybrook  .         .         .         253 

This  imaginary  sketch  is  based  on  photographs  of  con- 
temporary houses  of  the  supposed  Lynde  house  type,  and 
on  the  map  of  Saybrook  Point  in  1709  on  page  256 

Saybrook  Point  in  1709 256 

President  Stiles  published  a  rough  sketch  of  the  streets  and 
houses  on  Saybrook  Point  in  his  "Itinerary"  of  1793.  The 
contours  of  the  Point  and  street  layout  in  this  map,  with 
such  of  the  buildings  as  were  standing  in  1709,  have  been 
taken  from  the  Stiles  map.  I  am  indebted  to  Rev.  Dr. 
Samuel  Hart,  of  Middletown,  Conn.,  for  numerous  notes 
on  the  Stiles  sketch,  which  have  made  it  possible  to  repre- 
sent here,  with  a  very  close  approach  to  historical 
accuracy,  what  other  houses  were  then  standing 

The  Morgan  House  in  Clinton       ....         259 

From  the  original  building,  on  the  Clinton  main  street,  a 
few  rods  east  of  the  Green.  This  house,  however,  may 
have  been  erected  at  a  little  later  date  than  1701,  judging 
from  a  manuscript  account  of  the  town's  history  loaned 
by  a  Clinton  antiquarian 

Governor  Treat's  House  in  Milford,  1699  .         .        265 

From  Lambert's  "History  of  the  Colony  of  New  Haven" 

A  Madison  House  of  1700 274 

This  building  is  still  standing,  opposite  the  Madison  Green 

Portrait  of  Governor  Gurdon  Saltonstall       .         .         277 

The  University  owns  a  contemporary  portrait  of  Salton- 
stall, from  which  was  made  the  copy  in  the  Connecticut 
State  Library 


xxvi  Illustrations 


PAGE 

Governor  Saltonstall's  Chair  ....         283 

This  chair  stood  in  the  Saltonstall  house  in  East  Haven 
and  is  now  in  the  possession  of  a  private  owner  there. 
This  drawing  of  it  is  from  a  photograph  reproduced  in 
Sarah  E.  Hughes'  "History  of  East  Haven" 

Saltonstall's  Connecticut  Troops  in  Boston  in  1710        287 

Justin  Winsor's  "Narrative  and  Critical  History  of 
America"  is  authority  for  the  fact  that  Saltonstall's  Boston 
headquarters  on  this  military  expedition  was  "The  Green 
Dragon  Inn."  This  picture  of  that  inn  is  taken  from 
Whitefield's  "Homes  of  our  Forefathers" 

Autograph  of  Gurdon  Saltonstall  ....         288 

From  a  letter  to  Governor  Fitz-John  Winthrop,  dated 
1698,  in  the  University  Archives 

Portrait  of  Jeremiah  Dummer  ....         289 

From  an  engraving  in  Justin  Winsor's  "Narrative  and 
Critical  History  of  America" 

Queen  Anne  Square,  London  .....         292 

Based  on  a  plate  in  "The  History  of  the  Squares  of 
London,"  by  E.  Beresford  Chancellor,  which,  being  a  little 
later  in  date,  probably  does  not  show  the  Yale  mansion. 
The  square,  however,  was  practically  the  same  in  Elihu 
Yale's  day 

Plasgrono,  Elihu  Yale's  Wrexham  House       .         .         295 

From  a  photograph  of  an  old  drawing  published  in  Rod- 
ney Horace  Yale's  "The  Yales  and  Wales" 

The  Arrival  of  the  Dummer  Books  at  Saybrook      .         299 

The  details  for  this  imaginary  reconstruction  were  studied 
on  the  ground,  the  scene  being  laid  at  the  old  Saybrook 
Point  landing  place  at  the  south  end  of  the  main  village 
street 

Autograph  of  Benjamin  Lord  .         .  .         .         .         311 

From  an  original  letter,  dated  1776,  in  the  University 
Archives 


Illustrations  xxvii 


PAGE 

Autograph  of  Thomas  Buckingham  (of  Hartford)  .         314 

From  an  original  Trustees'  document  in  the  University 
Archives 

Autograph  of  Thomas  Ruggles         .         .  .         .         318 

From  an  original  paper,  dated  1720,  in  the  University 
Archives 

Autograph  of  Moses  Noyes       .....         320 

From  an  original  endorsement  of  the  minutes  of  the  last 
Trustees'  meeting  held  at  Saybrook,  September  12,  1716, 
in  the  University  Archives 

Rev.  Azariah  Mather's  House  in  Saybrook       .         .         321 

From  a  photograph  loaned  by  Rev.  Dr.  Samuel  Hart  of 
Middletown.  This  house,  however,  may  have  been  built 
at  a  later  date  than  1716 

Autograph  of  Stephen  Buckingham  .         .         .         323 

From  a  copy  of  a  Trustees'  letter  to  Jeremiah  Dummer, 
September  10,  1718,  signed  by  the  Trustees,  and  now  in  the 
University  Archives 

Autograph  of  Samuel  Johnson  ....         324 

From  "The  Life  and  Correspondence  of  Samuel  John- 
son," by  Rev.  E.  E.  Beardsley 

The  Saltonstall  House  ......         328 

Reconstructed  from  a  rough  sketch  in  Whitefield's  "Homes 
of  our  Forefathers" 

Portrait  of  Tutor  Samuel  Johnson  .         .         .         .         331 

From  "The  Life  and  Correspondence  of  Samuel  Johnson," 
by  Rev.  E.  E.  Beardsley 

Facsimile  of  Letter  by  Rector  Samuel  Andrew  .         334 

From  the  original  in  the  University  Archives,  dated  July 
23,  1717 


xxviii  Illustrations 


PAGE 

Building  the  College  House  .....         339 

This  imaginary  sketch  is  based  on  the  actual  dimensions  of 
the  timbers,  to  be  found  in  a  memorandum  on  the  back  of 
a  Trustees'  paper  in  the  University  Archives,  and  pub- 
f  lished  for  the  first  time  in  Professor  Dexter's  "Docu- 
*  mentary  History  of  Yale  University"  (1916).  Several 
suggestions  by  Mr.  Norman  M.  Isham,  the  Colonial  archi- 
tecture authority,  have  been  incorporated  in  the  framing 
plans 

Autograph  of  John  Davenport  (of  Stamford)  .         .         343 

From  an  original  document  in  the  University  Archives, 
dated  1718 

Autograph  of  Elihu  Yale        .....         344 

From  an  original  letter  in  the  possession  of  the  Elizabethan 
Club  at  Yale  University 

Autograph  of  Jeremiah  Dummer     ....         349 

From  Avery's  "History  of  the  United  States" 

Portrait  of  Elihu  Yale  ......         352 

From  the  original  painting  by  Enoch  Zeeman,  probably 
done  in  1717  in  London,  and  nov?  in  the  University  Dining 
Hall 

The  First  Yale  College  House  ....         354 

The  traditional  view  of  this  building  is  the  Greenwood 
plate  published  by  Buck  in  Boston,  around  1750.  Pro- 
fessor Dexter,  in  his  "Yale  Biographies  and  Annals,"  con- 
siders the  Greenwood  representation  as  "a  fancy  sketch." 
It  obviously  does  not  follow  the  dimensions  of  the  struc- 
ture, as  given  by  the  Trustees  at  the  time  or  in  their 
memorandum  of  the  timber  specifications,  nor  by  President 
Clap  in  his  "Annals  of  Yale,"  1766.  An  attempt  has  here 
been  made,  with  the  valued  assistance  of  Mr.  Norman  M. 
Isham  of  Providence,  the  recognized  authority  on  early 
New  England  architecture,  to  represent  this  building  for 
the  first  time  in  its  known  dimensions,  which  were  about 
165  feet  long  by  22  wide,  and  27  feet  high.  Professor 
Dexter's  decision  that  there  was  no  clock  on  this  building. 


Illustrations  xxix 


PAGE 

as  Greenwood's  drawing  has  it,  has  been  adopted  for  this 
representation.  On  the  other  hand, — accepting  Mr. 
Isham's  decision,  made  after  close  study  by  him  of  all 
available  sources,  that  "Greenwood  probably  sat  down 
before  this  building  and  drew  it  'just  as  it  really  was,'  " — 
all  of  the  other  details  of  the  traditional  sketch  have  been 
retained  in  this  new  representation.  Says  Mr.  Isham: 
"From  my  examination  of  the  Greenwood  engraving  it 
seems  to  me  that,  apart  from  the  fact  that  it  is  inaccurate 
and  wrong  in  many  ways  in  proportion  and  perspective, 
it  is  correct  in  important  items."  As  to  the  drawing  in  this 
book  Mr.  Isham  says:  "It  is  a  good  interpretation  of  the 
Greenwood  engraving,  and  is  as  near  as  anyone  can  ever 
get  to  the  building  as  it  was  in  1718,  though  the  element 
of  conjecture,  of  course,  will  largely  come  in  in  any 
modern  reconstruction."  Later  contemporary  sketches  of 
this  building  are  entirely  at  variance  with  each  other, 
from  the  correctly-elongated  plan  in  Brown's  Map  of  1724, 
and  the  high  and  short  elevation  in  Wadsworth's  Map 
of  New  Haven  "with  all  the  buildings  in  1748"  (which 
gives  it  six  entries  and  a  hip  roof),  to  the  views  in  Honey- 
wood's  sketches  printed  in  Stiles'  "Literary  Diary."  The 
fact,  however,  that  it  had  three  entries,  is  fully  established 
both  by  Greenwood's  sketch  and  by  the  rough  pen  draw- 
ings in  President  Clap's  manuscript  College  "Account 
Books"  in  the  University  Archives,  wherein  he  assigned  the 
rooms  to  the  students 

Autograph  of  William  Tailor  ....         358 

From  Avery's  "History  of  the  United  States" 

The  Commencement  at  New  Haven  in  1718     .  .         359 

An  imaginary  sketch,  based  on  Samuel  Johnson's  manu- 
script account  of  the  occasion  in  the  University  Archives, 
from  Brown's  Map  of  1724,  and  from  the  new  view  of  the 
College  House  in  this  book 

The  Hartford  State  House  of  1719  .  .         .         .         364 

From  a  drawing  in  William  DeLoss  Love's  "Colonial 
History  of  Hartford" 

Bringing  the  College  Books  to  New  Haven       .         .         367 

A  sketch  based  on  contemporary  accounts  of  the  proceeding 


XXX  Illustrations 


PAGE 

Portrait  of  Rector  Timothy  Cutler  .         .         .         373 

From  Kingsley's  "Yale  College" 

The  Entrance  to  St.  Giles  Church^  Wrexham  .         376 

From  a  photograph  loaned  by  Mr.  Warwick  James  Price, 
and  published  in  The  Yale  Alumni  JVeekly  in  1907 

The  Yale  Family  Church-yard  near  Plas-yn  Yale  .         380 
From  "The  Yales  and  Wales,"  by  Rodney  Horace  Yale 

The  Market-place  from  the  College  Yard  in  1724  .         384 

An  imaginary  reconstruction,  based  closely  on  contempo- 
rary records  of  the  sites,  and  New  Haven  histories  of  the 
appearance,  of  the  various  buildings 

Autograph  of  John  Alling       .....         389 

This  original  autograph  of  Yale's  treasurer  from  1702  to 
1717  is  taken  from  his  will,  found  for  this  book  among  the 
court  documents  of  that  period  by  John  L.  Gilson,  judge 
of  the  Probate  Court  of  New  Haven  County 

New  Haven  in  1724 390 

Reconstructed,  with  additions  drawn  from  contemporary 
public  records,  from  Brown's  "Map  of  New  Haven  in 
1724" 

Autograph  of  Timothy  Cutler        ....         394 

From  an  original  document  in  the  University  Archives 
dated  1720,  and  signed  by  the  Trustees  and  witnessed  by 
Cutler,  who  was  not  a  Trustee 

A  Yale  Undergraduate  of  1 720  ....         395 

This  drawing  is  based  on  costumes  shown  in  Greenwood's 
sketch  of  the  first  College  House,  and  from  contempo- 
raneous Harvard  student  costumes  in  the  well-known 
"Prospect  of  the  Colleges  in  Cambridge,  New  England, 
1726,"  published  in  George  Gary  Bush's  "Harvard,"  and 
elsewhere 


Illustrations  xxxi 


PAGE 

Autograph  of  Jared  Eliot         .....         397 

From  "Memorials  of  Eminent  Yale  Men,"  by  Anson  Phelps 
Stokes 

Rector  Cutler  and  the  Trustees     ....         406 

As  described  in  the  text,  and  showing  the  second-floor 
Library  of  the  College  House,  with  the  Dummer  books, 
globes,  etc. 

Autograph  of  Daniel  Browne,  Jr.   ....         410 

From  an  original  paper  of  1720  in  the  University  Archives 

Portrait  of  Tutor  Jonathan  Edwards       .         .         .         413 

From  Anson  Phelps  Stokes'  "Memorials  of  Eminent  Yale 
Men" 

Autograph  of  Jonathan  Edwards      .         .         .         .         417 

From  "The  Edwards  Memorial,"  1871 

The  College  Yard  from  the  President's  House  .         419 

An  imaginary  reconstruction,  based  on  the  new  view  of 
"Yale  College"  in  this  book,  and  on  the  known  location  of 
the  President's  house  and  gardens  on  Chapel  Street 

Autograph  of  Eliphalet  Adams         ....         425 

From  an  original  letter,  dated  New  London,  1717,  in  the 
University  Archives 

Portrait  of  Rector  Elisha  Williams         .         .         .         426 

The  original  portrait  of  Rector  Williams  was  painted  by 
Smybert,  the  contemporary  Boston  artist,  after  1724.  The 
copy  owned  by  the  University  was  made  by  Moulthrop  in 
1795 

The  President's  House,  1722     .....         428 

From  a  drawing  in  Kingsley's  "Yale  College" 

Autograph  of  Rector  Elisha  Williams   .,        .         .         430 

From  Kingsley's  "Yale  College" 


PART  I 

JOHN  DAVENPORT  AND  HIS  NEW  HAVEN 
COLLEGE 


i-'Sf!i'^i!-:ii'f!fi''ryti^yf-'r:.'-i^ 


1^      The  Davenport       |i| 
^  Arms  ^ 


CHAPTER  I 


JOHN  DAVENPORT 

I 

N  the  latter  days  of  the  reign  of  the 
good  Queen  Bess,  the  quaint  little  city 
of  Coventry,  famed  for  its  ancient 
procession  of  the  Lady  Godiva  and  for 
its  wooden-headed  Peeping  Tom,  was 
still  the  considerable  rural  community 
that  it  had  been  for  two  centuries  of 
English  history.  Around  it  still  ran 
that  great  city  wall, — three  miles  long  and  nine  good  English 
feet  in  thickness, — which,  with  its  thirty-two  towers  and 
twelve  fortified  gates,  had  done  good  service  for  the  rebel- 
lious Warwick  against  Edward  VI  and  which,  a  half-century 
later,  was  to  defy  Charles  I  and,  still  later,  be  demolished  by 
his  son.  It  was,  in  1600,  a  community  of  some  twelve  hun- 
dred houses,  built  for  the  most  part  of  great  timbers  filled  in 
with  the  plastered  brick  of  the  early  15th  Century  style,  the 
upper  stories  of  which  projected  over  the  narrow  paved 
lanes  below.  Through  it  then,  as  in  William  Dugdale's  day, 
still  flowed  the  river  Sherbourne,  to  join  the  Avon  a  few 
miles  out  in  the  country  and  then  meander  through  pleasant 
woods  and  meadows  to  Warwick  and  Stratford-on-Avon, 
where  William  Shakespeare  was  shortly  to  end  his  days,  and, 
come  a  few  years,  John  Harvard  to  be  born. 

Difficult  it  would  have  been  to  imagine,  when  John 
Davenport  was  born  in  1597  in  this  ancient  walled  English 
city,  that  the  seed  was  there  to  be  planted  that  later,  in  the 


4  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

career  of  this  famous  son  of  Coventry,  was  to  come  to 
flower  in  the  New  World  church-state  of  New  Haven,  and, 
two  generations  later  still,  to  bring  forth  that  institution 
whose  beginnings  are  again  to  be  traced  in  the  following 
chapters. 

Yet  the  occasion  was  forming,  for  the  England  of  Eliza- 
beth's day,  as  we  will  recall,  was  at  the  parting  of  the 
established  ways  of  the  English  centuries.  The  forty  years 
of  Elizabeth  had  seen  the  highest  development  in  Tudor 
history  of  the  power  of  the  Crown;  on  the  other  hand,  of 
the  most  generally  contented  public  under  the  traditional 
English  monarchy.  Yet  the  underlying  movement  for  what 
we  now  know  as  the  modern  era  was  rising  steadily.  With 
the  tactless  opening  acts  of  James  I's  reign,  it  was  shortly 
to  sweep  up  through  the  two  decades  of  that  grotesque 
period,  and  end,  at  the  close  of  the  civil  wars  of  Charles  I, 
in  carrying  Cromwell's  Puritans  over  the  decapitated  body 
of  the  King  into  Whitehall,  and,  when  that  furious  religious- 
political  wave  had  subsided,  in  the  beginnings  of  modern 
England. 

Coventry,  as  all  Warwickshire,  had  been  a  storm-center 
of  this  hardly-understood  popular  movement  throughout 
the  half-century  before  John  Davenport  was  born.  During 
his  grandfather's  later  years,  Elizabeth  being  queen,  the 
Protestant  refugees  who  had  scurried  to  Geneva  during  the 
brief  days  of  Bloody  Queen  Mary  had  returned  to  their 
homes.  They  since,  throughout  rural  England,  had  been 
growing  in  numbers  and  influence ;  had  come  to  assume  high 
offices  in  Church  and  State,  and  now,  during  the  last  years 
of  the  1 6th  Century,  were  the  predominant  party  among  the 
middle-class  Englishmen,  both  in  London  and  in  the  pro- 
vincial cities.  In  Warwickshire,  the  Protestant  movement 
had  been  especially  strong  ever  since  the  Lollard  days. 
Warwick  men   had  been   famous  martyrs  to   the   popular 


John  Davenport 


Church  reform  under  the  earlier  Tudors,  and  Coventry 
friends  and  neighbors  of  Davenport's  family  had  gone  to 
the  stake  for  the  new  religious  principles.  So  that,  I  fancy, 
the  majority  of  the  people  among  whom  John  Davenport 
was  to  grow  up  as 
a  serious-minded 
and  ambitious  boy, 
were  prepared  by 
the  year  1600  to 
cast  their  lot  with 
the  new  party  and 
to  add  to  the  rapid- 
ly growing  public 
feeling  throughout 
England  against 
the  petty  despot- 
isms of  the  divine- 
ly appointed  James 
and  his  impositions 
of  Church  cere- 
mony. In  1565  the 
young  Queen  Bess 
had  visited  Coven- 
try and  had  been  received  with  that  genuine  show  of  loyalty 
which  was  life  itself  to  her.  Ten  years  later  she  was  again 
entertained,  and  the  famous  old  Coventry  play  of  "Hock 
Tuesday"  performed  for  her  benefit.  But  twenty-five  years 
more,  and  the  good  Coventry  townsfolk  would  have  stood 
silently  in  their  narrow  paved  lanes  had  Elizabeth  visited 
them  again,  in  strong  aversion  to  the  type  of  English  life 
and  court  morality  which  the  Queen  and  her  royal  favorites 
had  come  to  typify  for  them. 

This  change,  which  made  the  Coventry  of  John  Daven- 
port's youth  a  different  place  from  that  of  his  father's,  had, 


The  Beginnings  of  Yale 


of  course,  permeated  the  whole  of  England.  We  may  recall 
how  it  had  been  coming.  The  introduction  of  the  Bible  as 
a  popular  book  had  been  reacting  on  the  social  as  well  as 
the  religious  conditions  of  the  people  for  a  century  previous. 
The  New  Learning  had  come  in  with  the  Italian  Renais- 
sance and  had  brought  with  it  the  philosophy  and  poetry  of 
the  Greeks  and  Latins.  A  broadened  intellectual  horizon 
had  thus  come  to  Englishmen.  The  new  sense  of  individual- 
ism that  grew  out  of  the  free  study  of  the  Bible  had  worked 
to  produce  that  swelling  tide  of  popular  learning  and  that 
new  sense  of  personal  liberty  which  were  shortly  to  lay  the 
broad  foundations  for  our  modern  intellectual  and  political 
democracy. 

The  Coventry  people  had  long  been  taking  part  in  this 
new  popular  change.  The  great-grandfather  of  John 
Davenport  could  have  bought  suppressed  translations  of 
the  Bible  at  the  Coventry  Corpus  Christi  Fairs  from 
itinerant  missionaries,  just  as  his  father  probably  did  buy, 
surreptitiously,  the  "Martin  Marprelate"  attacks  on  the 
Elizabethan  episcopate  from  discreet  neighboring  trades- 
men in  the  Corpus  Christi  Fairs  of  his  day.  In  fact,  the 
"Marprelate"  printers  at  one  time  had  taken  refuge  from 
the  Bishop  of  London  and  the  Primate  in  friendly  Coven- 
try, and  had  secretly  issued  their  anonymous  and  revolution- 
ary pamphlets  from  the  very  houses  where,  doubtless, 
Davenport's  father  was  a  frequent  visitor.  The  final  sup- 
pression of  these  pamphlets,  with  the  execution  of  one  of 
their  authors,  was  no  doubt  a  determining  factor  in  the 
religious  zeal  with  which  Coventry  people,  as  Warwickshire 
folk  generally,  supported  Cartwright,  the  master  of  the 
hospital  at  near-by  Warwick,  in  his  attempt  to  introduce  his 
more  or  less  Presbyterian  scheme  of  church  discipline  and 
organization  of  classes  and  synods  as  a  rival  system  to  the 
established  Church.     Mid-England,  and  London  as  well, 


John  Davenport 


were  thus — by  1600 — preparing  for  the  movement  which, 
as  we  know  it  in  Puritanism,  was  shortly  to  rock  the  nation 
to  its  very  social  and  religious  center,  and  bring  about  new 
times. 

So  that  John  Davenport's  religious  and  political  sur- 
roundings, as  he  grew  up  to  boyhood  in  the  ancient  walled 
city  of  Coventry,  were  decidedly  revolutionary.  The  open- 
ing acts  of  the  coming  Puritan  period  were  well  under  way 
by  the  time  that  he  first  appears  as  a  scholar  at  the  Free 
Grammar  School  of  his  old  city.  This  school  building, 
famous  among  the  great  English  public  schools  that  sprang 
up  throughout  the  country  during  the  Reformation,  four 
centuries  previously  had  been  the  home  of  the  Coventry 
Hospitallers  of  St.  John,  and  had  been  granted,  during 
Henry  VIII's  sweeping  suppression  of  the  monasteries,  to 


8  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

one  John  Hales,  who,  a  New  Learning  follower,  had  given 
it  to  the  town  as  a  Free  School.  One  of  the  original  aisles 
of  this  ancient  hospital,  and  the  schoolroom  of  young 
Davenport's  boyhood,  now  a  parish  room,  may  still  be  seen 
by  the  inquiring  visitor.  It  was  in  this  tiny,  high-peaked, 
stone-buttressed  building,  with  its  muUioned  windows,  that 
young  John  Davenport  went  to  school,  there  to  learn  his 
grammar,  to  drone  out  his  three  music  lessons  a  week,  to 
recite  his  Latin  verses,  and,  no  doubt,  boy  fashion,  to  hack 
his  initials  in  the  old  oak  prior's  stalls  as  did  the  famous 
antiquarian,  Dugdale,  before  him.  The  father  of  John 
Milton's  Cambridge  tutor  was  later  in  charge  of  this  school, 
and  Dr.  Holland,  a  renowned  classical  translator  and  drill- 
master  of  the  day,  was  a  youthful  usher  there  when  John 
Davenport  began  his  schooling.  John  Davenport's  lifelong 
fluency  in  classical  study,  and  his  various  attempts  to  build 
his  New  Haven  Colony  education  on  it,  very  likely  began  in 
the  many  long  boyhood  hours  that  he  spent  in  this  quaint 
old  Coventry  Free  School  under  the  encouraging  eye  and 
rod  of  the  scholarly  Holland. 

It  was  during  these  school  years  of  Davenport,  and  just 
before  he  went  up  to  Oxford,  that  Coventry  had  that  first 
serious  clash  with  King  James  over  religious  matters  which 
was  to  become  in  time  an  important  factor  in  the  establish- 
ment of  his  Puritan  commonwealth.  Throughout  Eliza- 
beth's reign,  and  up  to  this  time  in  King  James',  the  popular 
feeling  of  the  growing  Puritan  element  in  the  Church  had 
steadily  been  gaining  ground  for  a  repression  t)f  the  many 
English-Church  ceremonies  which  the  liberated  English 
mind  connected  with  the  Church  of  Rome.  In  addition  to 
the  giving  of  a  ring  in  marriage,  for  instance,  the  Puritan 
element  objected  to  the  traditional  custom  of  kneeling  to 
receive  the  sacrament  of  the  Lord's  Supper.  Coventry 
people,  following  the  rebellious  Cartwright,  had  come  to 


John  Davenport 


relinquish  a  number  of  these  ceremonies.  But  noncon- 
formity in  anything  was  to  James  I  not  only  an  evidence  of 
disloyalty  to  the  established  Church,  but  to  the  Crown  itself, 
and  Coventry,  in  1611,  received  a  letter  from  the  King's 
own  hand  soundly  rating  the  Mayor  and  Corporation  for 
permitting  such  revolutionary  acts.  John  Davenport  was 
fourteen  years  old  when  the  uproar  broke  out  upon  the 
receipt  of  the  King's  summary  commands,  and  it  could 
hardly  have  escaped  affecting  him,  as  it  no  doubt  had  its 
part  in  unconsciously  determining  him  in  his  own  course 
some  few  years  afterwards.  The  townspeople  doubtless 
gave  in,  as  the  old  records  of  Coventry  show  that  King 
James  made  a  formal  visit  there  five  years  later,  with  a 
great  train  of  nobility,  to  be  received  in  humble  loyalty. 
The  houses  and  town  gates  were  painted  black  and  white  in 
his  honor  on  this  occasion,  there  was  a  great  procession  of 
the  Mayor  and  Corporation,  and  a  massive  cup  of  pure  gold 
was  presented  as  a  peace  offering  to  his  Majesty  and  put 
among  the  royal  plate.  Two  years  later  young  Davenport 
went  up  to  Oxford,  to  fit  himself  for  the  Church. 

Davenport's  Oxford  days  are  obscure  and  bear  little  on 
what  was  to  follow.  Whether  he  went  to  Merton  College 
and  thence  to  Magdalen  (as  Wood,  the  Oxford  chronicler, 
says)  or  matriculated  at  Brasenose  (as  says  Mather,  who 
had  Davenport's  private  papers  before  him  when  he  wrote 
his  biography  in  the  "Magnalia"  many  years  later)  we  do 
not  now  know.  At  any  rate,  he  entered  Oxford  as  a 
"battler,"  or  beneficiary  for  his  tuition  and  board,  at  the 
expense  doubtless  of  his  relatives  in  Coventry.  It  was  prob- 
ably two  years  later  that  he  was  forced  to  leave  Oxford,  his 
degrees  ungained  for  want  of  means  to  continue  his  study 
for  them.  Yet  he  had  made  a  small  mark  there,  even  in  that 
short  time,  if  we  may  accept  the  word  of  a  later  enemy,  one 


lo  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

Stephen  Goffe, — a  most  disreputable  individual,  by  the  way, 
and  brother,  as  it  happened,  of  that  regicide  whom  Daven- 
port was  to  befriend  many  years  later  in  New  Haven. 
Goffe  says  that  Davenport  had  made  a  name  for  himself  as 
a  speaker  and  writer  at  Oxford, — natural  gifts  which  were 
to  make  him  one  of  the  foremost  preachers  of  his  time. 

Oxford  at  that  day  was  far  from  its  earlier  character 
as  a  "nest  of  Papists."  It  had  passed  through  a  tremendous 
religious  excitement  due  to  the  incoming  of  the  New  Learn- 
ing. Yet,  when  Davenport  was  there,  it  was  probably  less 
intellectually  rebellious  than  its  sister  university  and  in  a 
few  years  was  passively  to  accept  King  James'  authority, 
as  Coventry  had  done.  This  very  passiveness  may  have 
had  its  usual  effect  in  Davenport's  mental  training,  and  have 
driven  in  still  deeper  the  sense  of  personal  freedom  in  reli- 
gious matters  with  which  he  had  come  up  to  the  University 
from  Coventry.  Yet  I  imagine  that  those  two  early  years 
of  Davenport's  at  Oxford  were  years  of  acquisition  rather 
than  of  religious  rebellion,  as  would  be  apt  to  be  the  case 
in  a  sixteen-year-old  youth  who  had  his  chosen  career  before 
him.  The  opportunities  in  this  way  were  unusual,  even  for 
Oxford.  Sir  Henry  Saville,  the  renowned  classical  scholar, 
was  Master  of  Merton  then;  John  Hales,  a  descendant  of 
the  Coventry  Hales,  was  Royal  Professor  of  Greek;  Dr. 
Thomas  Holland,  "an  Apollos  mighty  at  the  Scriptures," 
had  been  Regius  Professor  of  Divinity  at  Balliol,  was  now 
Rector  of  the  Puritan  school  at  Exeter,  and  later  was  to  be 
one  of  the  six  Oxford  scholars  who  were  to  translate  the 
prophets  for  the  King  James  Bible.  Christopher  Angelus, 
a  Christian  Greek  who  had  been  forced  to  leave  his  own 
country,  had  just  arrived  from  Cambridge  to  teach  elemen- 
tary Greek  and  vaingloriously  to  impress  his  scholars, — so 
the  story  goes, — with  the  marks  that  he  carried  of  Turkish 
persecution. 


r> 


i'    .J 


^^pJ/Ea^dalen  College  Uower 


12  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

Yet  Oxford  in  John  Davenport's  day  was  partially  rebel- 
lious. Balliol  College  was  a  Puritan  center  then,  Robert 
Abbott  leading  in  the  new  movement,  to  the  mounting  anger 
of  William  Laud,  then  President  of  St.  John's.  This  latter 
brilliant  Churchman,  later  to  be  the  sincere  If  cruel  tool  of 
the  Stuarts  in  suppressing  Puritanism  and  to  have  a  deter- 
mining effect  on  John  Davenport's  career  in  the  Church, 
was  even  then  attracting  incipient  Puritan  fire  and  brim- 
stone. The  Oxford  students  of  that  day — Davenport 
among  them — could  hardly  have  escaped  excitement  over 
the  situation  In  the  University  which  resulted  from  such 
fierce  pubhc  attacks  upon  him  as  when  Abbott,  thundering 
In  Balliol  pulpit,  cried:  "What  art  thou?  Romish  or 
English,  Papist  or  Protestant?  a  mongrel  compound  of 
both."  So  that,  if  Oxford  In  1616,  when  Davenport  left  it, 
was  officially  passive  In  the  King's  hands,  there  were  pro- 
fessors and  preachers  in  It  who  must  have  opened  the  eyes 
of  the  students  to  the  coming  struggle  between  the  Church 
of  James  and  the  people  of  England. 

John  Davenport's  Oxford  knew  probably  little  of  that 
other  Intellectual  world,  literary  London.  Shakespeare, 
having  written  "The  Tempest"  and  "A  Winter's  Tale" 
during  these  formative  years  of  young  Davenport's  life,  had 
died  comparatively  unknown  on  the  Avon  In  the  year  that 
the  latter  had  left  Oxford  to  begin  his  career  in  the  English 
Church.  Spenser  had  finished  "The  Faery  Queen"  when 
Davenport  was  two  years  old;  Thomas  Dekker  and  Ben 
Jonson  were  coming  on  for  the  last  stage  of  the  declining 
Elizabethan  drama.  But  all  of  this  magnificent  crest  of  the 
first  great  English  literature  had  passed  by  such  earnestly 
religious  youths  as  John  Davenport,  and  was  doubtless  little 
noticed  by  them.  It  Is  worth  recalling  something  of  this,  as 
the  cultural  lack  which  we  cannot  fail  to  sense  in  the  com- 
munity that  John  Davenport  later  led  to  the  New  World, 


John  Davenport  13 


and  its  absence  in  the  intellectual  life  of  the  early  days  of 
the  college  his  successors  were  to  found,  goes  back,  in  very 
large  measure,  I  doubt  not,  to  this  separation. 

I  do  not  need  to  do  more  than  pass  rapidly  over  the  well- 
known  facts  of  Davenport's  career  in  the  next  few  years. 
We  trace  him  through  a  minor  chaplaincy  near  the  historic 
church  of  Durham  to  a  small  position  in  St.  Lawrence  Jewry 
in  London,  and  then  suddenly  to  the  vicarage  of  one  of 
London's  most  influential  churches,  St.  Stephen's  in  Coleman 
Street, — a  position  which  in  itself  is  the  best  evidence  that 
we  can  have  of  his  inherent  powers  and  capacity.  Here 
John  Davenport  found  himself  suddenly  in  the  midst  of  the 
fullest  public  life  of  his  time,  and  in  touch  with  the  leaders 
on  all  sides  of  the  great  public  questions.  He  went  up  to 
Oxford  now,  to  pass  his  examinations  for  his  degrees,  and, 
returning  to  London,  seems  to  have  launched  himself  full 
upon  the  troublous  waters  of  the  day. 

These,  we  hardly  need  again  to  recall,  were  troublous 
enough.  It  had  now  been  some  sixty  years  since  the  first 
small  voluntary  congregation  of  Separatists  from  the 
Church  of  England  had  been  broken  up  in  London  and  most 
of  the  members  unceremoniously  marched  off  to  jail.  It 
had  been  some  fifty  years  since  Robert  Browne's  pioneer 
Congregational  church  had  been  formed  and,  in  its  extreme 
revolt  from  traditions,  had  angered  the  Puritan  element  in 
the  established  Church  as  much  as  the  Church  dignitaries 
themselves.  It  had  been  but  a  generation  since,  to  the 
hilarious  amusement  of  the  Court  and  of  the  university 
men  in  London,  that  one  of  their  members,  John  Barrowe, 
the  Cambridge  graduate,  turned  Puritan.  The  Separatist 
movement,  fanned  by  the  extremists  who  had  fled  to  Holland 
and  Geneva  and  returned,  was  now  rapidly  gaining.  James, 
shivering  and  gibbering  over  the  fear  that  the  Scottish  pres- 
bytery would  follow  him  into  England,  had,  immediately 


14  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

upon  his  accession,  demanded  conformity  of  the  English 
Puritan  clergy  and  laymen,  and  begun  that  tense  religious 
struggle  which  was  at  once  to  become  a  political  one,  with 
the  results  we  now  know.  William  Brewster,  at  Scrooby, 
had  organized  his  Separatist  congregation,  and  had  at- 
tracted to  it  the  William  Bradford  who  later,  as  the  first 
Governor  of  Plymouth,  was  to  become  a  leader  in  the  New 
World  settlement.  The  Scrooby  Separatists'  church  had 
been  stopped  by  the  public  prosecutors,  and  the  members 
had  fled  to  Leyden  in  Holland.  But  the  Puritan  movement 
was  under  way. 

II 

All  of  which  was  the  beginning  of  a  new  era  in  English 
history.  And  other  factors  were  coming  in  as  well.  During 
the  latter  years  of  this  period,  English  trade  had  estabhshed 
itself  across  the  Atlantic  in  successful  dispute  of  Spanish 
appropriations,  and  joint-stock  companies  of  English  capi- 
talists had  been  formed  to  colonize  the  New  World's  eastern 
coast  and  benefit  from  the  great  trading  possibilities  that 
were  imagined  to  lie  In  that  direction.  The  story  is  well 
known:  how,  In  1607,  one  of  these  companies  settled 
Jamestown,  Virginia;  how  in  this  way  the  attention  of  the 
London  Puritan  refugees  was  directed  to  the  possibility  of 
emigrating  under  one  of  them;  how  these  so-called  Pilgrims, 
under  Brewster  and  Bradford,  sailed  across  the  ocean  and, 
by  a  fortunate  miscalculation,  landed  in  what  is  now  Massa- 
chusetts and  settled  Plymouth.  And  familiar  is  the  story 
of  how  John  White,  the  Puritan  rector  of  Dorchester,  saw 
In  this  pioneer  emigration  the  chance  to  "raise  a  bulwark 
against  the  kingdom  of  Anti-chrlst,"  and  thus  to  establish 
a  Puritan  refuge  in  a  new  England.  This  scheme,  once 
broached,  appears  to  have  met  with  Immediate  favor  among 
the  leading  Puritans.     Salem  was  settled  with  Endlcott  as 


John  Davenport  15 


Governor.  The  enterprise  of  "The  Governor  and  Com- 
pany of  Massachusetts  Bay"  was  then  begun,  the  charter 
for  which  Charles  had  unsuspiciously  granted  in  the  same 
week  that  had  seen  his  dramatic  ending,  for  eleven  years,  of 
popular  Parliament  in  England  and  his  clapping  of  the 
democratic  Eliot  into  the  Tower  of  London,  there  to  end 
his  noble  days.  In  1629  John  Winthrop  had  ridden  to 
Boston  in  Lincolnshire  to  consult  with  Thomas  Dudley  re- 
garding this  Massachusetts  scheme.  A  month  later  the 
famous  Cambridge  "Agreement"  had  been  drawn  up,  and 
then  Winthrop  had  sailed  to  become  Governor  of  Massa- 
chusetts, where,  in  the  next  few  years,  over  a  thousand 
Puritans  settled  about  the  new  Boston  in  New  England. 

John  Davenport  was  in  his  second  year  in  his  first  London 
parish  when  the  Brewster  party  had  founded  Plymouth,  and 
he  contributed  £50  to  this  new  Winthrop  emigration.  This 
gift,  however,  had  been  anonymous.  He  did  not  wish  to 
come  too  prominently,  at  this  time,  to  the  notice  of  William 
Laud,  now  Bishop  of  London  and  rapidly  becoming  a  power 
in  the  Church.  The  curious  interest  of  that  implacable 
enemy  of  nonconformity  had  for  some  time  been  turned 
in  the  direction  of  the  young  and  brilliant  preacher  in  Cole- 
man Street;  envious  tongues  had  been  wagging;  no  doubt, 
like  other  Puritan  leaders,  he  was  discussed  gaily  at  Ben 
Jonson's  "Devil's  Tavern"  in  Temple  Bar;  his  popularity 
in  London,  which  had  come  to  fill  St.  Stephen's  Church  each 
Sunday,  considering  the  unsettled  state  of  the  public  reli- 
gious sentiment,  was  a  suspicious  matter.  Meeting  charges 
of  nonconformity  he  seemed  to  have  proved  to  Laud  that 
he  had  conducted  himself  with  at  least  full  outward  sem- 
blance of  the  strictest  conformity  to  the  Church  ritual,  even 
insisting  on  that  kneeling  upon  which  Laud  set  such  im- 
portance. He  did  not  escape  so  easily,  however,  in  another 
matter.     He  had  joined  with  a  number  of  serious  Puritan 


i6  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

churchmen  in  a  sort  of  homd-missionary  society,  formed  for 
the  purpose  of  supporting,  with  purchased  parish  impro- 
priations, a  better  grade  of  ministers  for  the  country  towns 
than  Laud's  party  in  the  Church  had  been  willing  to  have. 
This  philanthropic  effort  had  been  stamped  out  by  Laud  as 
soon  as  he  discovered  it,  and  the  culprits — including  Daven- 
port— had  all  but  been  haled  into  the  courts  on  criminal 
charges.  The  moment,  therefore,  was  not  propitious  for 
a  public  avowal  by  him  of  his  interest  in  the  Massachusetts 
Bay  Puritan  emigration.  To  be  seriously  suspected  of 
private  incHnations  toward  "Doctrinal  Puritanism"  was  to 
invite  exclusion  from  the  Church,  suppression,  and  even 
imprisonment.  And  so,  during  this  period,  John  Davenport 
found  himself  one  of  a  very  large  number  of  earnest  folk, 
both  clerical  and  lay,  who  were  tending  toward  Puritanism, 
yet  attempting  what  finally  became  to  them  an  Impossible 
reconciliation  between  their  outward  acts  and  their  private 
opinions. 

It  was  at  this  time,  when  he  was  under  suspended  indict- 
ment for  his  share  In  the  "Feoffees"  incident,  that  John 
Davenport  seems  to  have  proceeded  methodically  to  investi- 
gate his  own  mind  on  the  subject.  In  a  voluminous  personal 
notebook  that  has  come  down  to  us,  is  contained  the  ex- 
haustively argued  account  of  his  own  Intellectual  change  at 
this  time  from  conformity  to  nonconformity.  That  this  was 
brought  about  by  outside  Influences,  also,  we  now  can  have 
no  doubt.  In  London  were  then  in  concealment  two  famous 
nonconforming  ministers,  whose  cases  were  the  subject  of 
considerable  public  excitement.  These  two  men,  the  later 
careers  of  whom  were  to  be  closely  Intertwined  with  John 
Davenport's,  were  John  Cotton  and  Thomas  Hooker. 
Both  were  university  men  and  famous  preachers,  and  both 
were  friends  of  Davenport.  Cotton  had  just  been  driven 
out  of  St.  Botolph's  in  Boston  by  Bishop  Laud,  and  Hooker 


John  Davenport 


17 


had  been  silenced  for  nonconformity  in  his  preaching  in  the 
httle  country  village  of  Chelmsford  in  Essex.  Cotton  had 
come  to  London  in  disguise,  and  was  now  in  hiding  under 
Davenport's  protection.  The  latter  seems  to  have  set  out 
to  change  Cotton's  mind,  and  reclaim  him  for  the  Church, 
as  he  had  his  uncle  in  Coventry.  But  the  long  argument 
that  ensued  appears,  instead,  to  have  unsettled  John  Daven- 
port's own  mind.  Cotton  escaped  to  New  England,  to  join 
the  Boston  settlement.  Davenport  remained  away  from 
the  communion  services  of  St.  Stephen's  for  the  next  few 
months  and,  when  his  old  friend  and  protector  against  Laud 
suddenly  died  on  August  4,  1633,  and  it  became  known  that 
Laud  was  to  be  elevated  to  Canterbury,  left  London  for  the 
country,  remained  in  seclusion  there  for  three  months,  and 
then,  "in  a  gray  suit  and  an  overgrown  beard,"  took  passage 
to  Holland,  a  refugee  from  that  Church  in  which  he  had 
planned  to  spend  his  life. 


J^ncCon   Swires 


^35^^/^-  Sa^Ftnu^ 


CHAPTER  II 
THE  NEW  HAVEN  COLONISTS 

I 

OHN  COTTON  and  Thomas  Hooker 
had  emigrated  to  the  Massachusetts 
Bay  Colony  with  large  parties  of  their 
followers  during  this  crisis  in  John 
Davenport's  life,  and  the  final  few 
groups  of  the  great  Puritan  emigration, 
which  were  to  follow  them,  were  now 
being  formed. 

The  last  of  these  was  now  coming  together  in  London, 
led  by  one  Theophilus  Eaton,  an  established  London  mer- 
chant of  wealth  and  reputation.  Eaton  was  a  parishioner 
of  Davenport's  in  the  Coleman  Street  Church,  and  had  been 
a  boyhood  friend  in  old  Coventry.  He  was  a  good  repre- 
sentative of  the  well-to-do  middle  class  of  the  day  who  had 
become  Puritan  in  their  Church  connections.  Though  not 
a  university  graduate,  he  was  a  man  of  parts,  traveled, 
versed  in  Roman  law  and  the  classics,  and  of  an  attractive 
personality  which  had  permitted  him  to  cut  a  good  figure  in 
the  small  London  society  of  his  day.  He  had  at  one  time 
been  employed,  while  abroad  on  his  own  affairs,  as  an  agent 
of  King  James  in  Denmark.  As  subsequent  events  were  to 
prove,  Eaton  was  a  man  of  unusual  solidity  and  ability. 
Like  Davenport,  he  had  had  a  hand  in  the  formation  of  the 
Massachusetts  Bay  Colony  and  had  subscribed  to  It,  though 
his  purpose  in  this  was  probably  more  commercial  than 
religious.     He  had  married,  as  his  second  wife,  the  widow 


The  New  Haven  Colonists  19 

of  David  Yale,  a  provincial  gentleman  of  Denbighshire, 
North  Wales,  whose  estate  was  but  a  few  miles  away  from 
his  father's  church  in  Great  Budworth,  whither  the  Eaton 
family  had  removed  in  the  early  days  from  Coventry.  This 
David  Yale  was  the  son  of  a  distinguished  Churchman,  the 
vicar-general  of  Chester,  and  had  settled  in  London,  where 
he  had  recently  died.  His  widow  brought  to  Theophilus 
Eaton  a  "fair  and  large  house"  in  the  Coleman  Street 
parish,  and  two  grown  sons,  Thomas  and  David  Yale,  both 
of  whom  joined  the  Eaton  party.  David  Yale,  at  this  time 
well  established  in  London  business  on  an  extensive  patri- 
mony, was  in  time  to  become  the  father  of  Elihu  Yale. 
Edward  Hopkins, — who  had  married  Theophilus  Eaton's 
step-daughter  by  the  latter's  marriage  to  the  widow  Yale, — 
also  a  merchant  in  the  city,  likewise  joined  the  London 
party. 

That  the  exile  in  Holland  of  John  Davenport  must  have 
had  a  good  deal  to  do  with  this  decision  of  Theophilus 
Eaton  to  emigrate  to  New  England,  and  that,  during  the 
two  or  three  years  that  now  elapsed  while  the  many  details 
involved  in  preparing  for  the  change  were  being  worked 
out,  Eaton  must  have  corresponded  with  Davenport  from 
London  about  it,  is  highly  probable.  The  religious  impulse 
toward  such  a  change  was  in  itself  a  determining  one  to  most 
of  the  London  folk  who  now  gathered  about  Theophilus 
Eaton  to  embark  upon  it.  The  latter's  brother,  Samuel,  a 
silenced  nonconforming  minister,  was  at  this  time  in  hiding 
and  prepared  to  follow  a  colleague  who  had  already  left 
for  New  England.  But  Theophilus  Eaton  was  a  business 
man  as  well  as  a  Churchman,  and,  from  what  later  was  to 
happen,  I  imagine  that  we  may  couple  commercial  ambition 
with  religious  fervor  as  the  factors  that  made  him  the  leader 
of  the  party,  and  that  attracted  to  him  that  considerable 
group  of  other  well-to-do  London  Puritan  tradesmen  who 


20  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

joined  him.  Under  his  leadership  several  other  groups, 
made  up  from  the  countryside  about  London,  were  now 
added  to  the  new  emigration.  The  Reverend  Whitfield  of 
Ashford  had  been  leading  a  Separatist  church  movement  in 
the  diocese  of  Canterbury  over  which  William  Laud  now 
presided  as  head  of  the  English  Church,  and  had  been  facing 
arrest  and  silencing;  hearing  of  the  new  emigration  he  seems 
to  have  thrown  in  his  fortunes  and  those  of  his  Kentish 
parishioners,  who  followed  him,  with  it.  The  Rev.  Peter 
Prudden  of  distant  Herefordshire,  near  Wales,  added  his 
little  group,  though  they  were  not  to  sail  with  the  original 
party.  A  third  section,  from  Yorkshire,  were  under  the 
leadership  of  their  own  nonconforming  minister,  the  Rev. 
Ezekiel  Rogers. 

II 

John  Davenport  had  now  spent  three  miserable  years  in 
Holland,  where,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  he  seems  fully  to 
have  expected  at  first  to  return  to  good  standing  in  the 
established  Church,  he  had  engaged  in  strenuous  contro- 
versies with  other  English  refugees,  and  had  tried,  with 
unhappy  results,  to  conduct  Separatist  services  on  his  own 
account.  Letters  from  John  Cotton  in  Boston,  and  doubt- 
less from  Eaton  in  London,  apprising  him  of  the  proposed 
emigration,  would  appear  to  have  finally  settled  his  mind. 
He  slipped  back  again  across  the  channel  early  in  1637  and, 
when  the  Eaton  party  sailed  from  London  late  in  April  of 
that  year,  had  been  accepted  as  the  joint  leader  of  it  with 
Eaton,  and  as  its  spiritual  pastor.  A  "covenant"  was  drawn 
up  between  the  various  groups  of  the  Eaton  party  before 
the  ship  "Hector"  weighed  anchor  off  English  shores, — 
an  agreement  of  some  sort  defining  the  purposes  of  the  emi- 
gration and  the  rights  of  the  shareholders  in  it,  much  the 


The  New  Haven  Colonists 


21 


oitse 
at  J^ham,  ^ncf/ana 


same  in  purpose  as  the  Cambridge  agreement  of  Mr.  Win- 
throp's  party.  Considerable  obscurity  surrounds  this  epi- 
sode in  the  coming  New  Haven  history.  But  I  fancy  that 
we  may  rather  clearly  see  in  it,  viewing  it  from  the  advan- 
tage of  later  events,  the  informal  preliminary  foundation  on 
Enghsh  soil  of  that  Separatist  Church-State  which  eventu- 
ally was  to  be  built  on  the  Quinniplac. 

Much  more  importance  surrounds  this  new  emigration 
than  usually  has  been  accorded  it,  for  it  was  to  be  a  unique 
enterprise.  The  original  Plymouth  congregation  had  had 
no  intention  of  separating  themselves  politically  from  the 
old  country;  nor  had  the  Massachusetts  Bay  settlers  such  a 
purpose.  Both  were  English  colonies  of  Puritan  church 
folk  in  New  England,  remaining,  in  the  New  World,  in 
touch  with  English  affairs  and  contentedly,  for  a  time  at 


22 


The  Beginnings  of  Yale 


least,  amenable  to  the  Court  of  High  Commission. 
Whether  Theophilus  Eaton  at  first  had  intended  to  go 
further  than  that  we  do  not  know.  But  that  John  Daven- 
port, thinking  out  the  situation  for  himself  in  Holland,  had 
come  to  an  extreme  position  in  his  own  mind  concerning  the 
possibihties  involved  in  the  new  emigration,  there  can  be  no 
doubt.  We  have  many  indications  of  this,  in  Davenport's 
own  thoroughgoing  contemporaneous  study  of  what  such  a 
commonwealth  should  be,  as  well  as  in  the  original  papers 


of  the  New  Haven  Colony  itself.  And  we  may  well  imagine 
that  the  personal  relations  of  Davenport  to  the  English 
Church,  and  especially  to  its  primate  Laud,  had  much  to  do 
with  this  decision  for  an  independent  church  congregation 
in  the  New  World.  For  such  it  was  to  be.  William  Laud 
had  had,  to  be  sure,  his  share  in  forcing  the  previous  Puritan 
parties  out  of  England.  But,  when  Davenport's  party  was 
forming,  he  had  come  into  autocratic  power  as  the  head  of 
the  Church.  As  such,  this  great  tool  of  Charles  I  was  now 
expending  all  of  his  force  and  power  to  demand  conformity 
among  the  Puritan  clergy,  with  the  end  in  view  of  eventually 
reuniting  the  Church  of  Rome  with  the  English  Church,  for 


The  New  Haven  Colonists  23 

his  own  and  Cliarles'  purposes.  As  a  result,  a  new  period 
of  severe  repression  of  nonconformity  had  come  in.  More- 
over, the  English  Church  was  forcibly  being  swung  by  Laud 
toward  Catholicism  in  both  doctrine  and  ceremonies.  So 
that  John  Davenport,  but  a  few  years  previously  one  of  the 
most  promising  clergymen  of  London,  now  that  he  had 
taken  the  irrevocable  step  of  fleeing  from  Laud's  domina- 
tion, was  his  implacable  enemy.  "My  hand  will  reach  him 
there,"  Laud  had  angrily  said  when  he  heard  of  Daven- 
port's escape  from  England.  Under  such  circumstances, 
Davenport  not  only  had  every  reason  to  attempt  to  find  a 
place  for  his  settlement  in  the  New  World  where  Laud 
could  not  reach  him,  but  to  find  a  place  where  he  could  build 
his  own  church-state,  independent  even  of  the  Puritan  con- 
gregations in  Massachusetts  that  had  preceded  him.  It 
was  with  this  unique  Separatist  purpose  in  mind  that  the 
leaders  of  the  Eaton-Davenport  party  landed  in  Boston 
harbor  on  June  26,  1637. 

Ill 

The  primitive  Massachusetts  Bay  Colony,  to  which  John 
Davenport  was  now  welcomed  by  his  old  friend  John  Cotton 
and  by  John  Wilson,  received  the  newcomers — including 
as  they  did  so  considerable  a  number  of  wealthy  Puritan 
laymen — with  every  desire  to  have  them  settle  there.  And 
a  number  did  so. 

But,  even  if  the  Boston  of  1637  had  not  been  under  the 
distant  eye  of  Laud,  other  circumstances  would  have  kept 
Davenport  from  remaining  there.  The  famous  Antinomlan 
controversy  was  just  then  at  its  height,  and  the  ravages 
which  the  valiant  Mrs.  Anne  Hutchinson  and  her  brother- 
in-law,   John   Wheelwright,   were   making   in   the   Boston 


24  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

church,  as  well  as  the  trouble  that  had  just  been  settled  by 
the  exile  of  Roger  Williams,  showed  clearly  that  Massa- 
chusetts was  no  permanent  home  for  a  new  group  that  had 
its  own  independent  religious  purposes  to  work  out.  Yet 
\ye  may  imagine  that  it  was  not  entirely  easy  to  carry  out 
the  plan  of  settling  elsewhere.  Several  towns  offered  free 
land  to  the  Davenport  settlers  if  they  would  join  the  Bay 
Colony.  Theophilus  Eaton  was  made  a  Massachusetts 
magistrate  in  the  expectation  that  he  would  remain  there. 
A  college  had  just  been  founded  by  an  act  of  the  Colony 
legislature  with  a  public  endowment  of  £400,  and,  just 
after  John  Davenport  landed,  the  General  Court  had  ap- 
pointed twelve  of  the  leading  men  of  the  Colony  to  establish 
it.  Davenport,  as  the  most  distinguished  new  addition  to 
the  university-bred  leaders  of  the  Colony,  was  appointed  to 
be  one  of  these,  serving  with  John  Cotton  and  John  Wilson, 
Governor  Winthrop,  Stoughton,  and  Thomas  Dudley.  I 
imagine  that  that  famous  journey  of  the  Bay  Colony  leaders 
across  the  marshes  and  river  to  Newtowne,  to  choose  a  site 
for  the  school  that  the  next  year  was  to  be  named  "Harvard 
College"  in  the  new  "Cambridge,"  may  well  have  had  its 
important  part  in  giving  to  John  Davenport  that  idea  of  a 
^^^^  similar  academy  in  his  own 

^  rYr        ^^      ^'^^\        colony  which  he  was  later 

^tff/l^  rra^)QaytCO  '     to  urge  throughout  his  life 

and  which  finally  was  to  be 
instituted  by  his  successors.  Not  only  in  these  ways  did  the 
Boston  folk  draw  the  newcomers  into  their  most  important 
affairs,  but  they  named  Theophilus  Eaton's  younger  and 
scapegrace  brother,  Nathaniel,  to  be  the  first  superintendent 
of  the  infant  Harvard  College,  and  its  first  instructor,  with 
what  amusing  results  Harvard's  early  history  tells. 

But,  in  spite  of  these  agreeable  amenities,  the  Davenport 
party  persisted  in  proceeding  with  that  first  determination 


The  New  Haven  Colonists  25 

to  establish  a  new  colony  of  their  own.  We  do  not  need  to 
do  more  than  outline  the  familiar  events  which  thereupon 
occurred.  The  redoubtable  Captain  Stoughton,  returning 
in  1637  from  his  chase  of  the  remaining  Pequot  Indians 
over  the  southern  Connecticut  marshes,  had  brought  glow- 
ing tales  of  the  excellent  harbors  to  be  found  in  that  new 
country  and  of  its  climate  and  other  possibilities.  To  in- 
vestigate these  stories,  and  the  particularly  rosy  account  of 
the  harbor  of  the  Quinnipiac  Indians,  Theophilus  Eaton 
sailed  in  August  with  a  few  of  his  hardiest  followers  around 
into  Long  Island  Sound,  past  Roger  Williams'  forest  home 
at  Providence,  the  newly  fortified  English  post  of  the 
younger  John  Winthrop  at  Saybrook,  and  into  the  broad, 
low  mouth  of  the  Quinnipiac.  Adopting  the  wooded  and 
fertile  plain  between  the  two  cliffs  that  the  Dutch  had  called 
the  "Red  Rocks"  as  a  most  desirable  location  for  John 
Davenport's  enterprise,  Eaton  left  a  few  men  for  the  winter 
and  returned  to  Boston  to  recruit  his  colony.  On  the 
assumption  that  Quinnipiac  was  included  in  the  land  rights 
of  the  little  Puritan  colony  of  Connecticut  that  Thomas 
Hooker  had  but  two  years  previously  settled  at  Windsor 
and  Hartford,  Eaton  sent  his  son-in-law,  Edward  Hopkins, 
to  Hooker  to  secure  a  title  for  the  new  site.  So  far  as  we 
know,  nothing  came  of  this  except  the  decision  of  Hopkins 
to  cast  in  his  lot  with  Hooker  rather  than  with  Davenport — 
a  decision  which,  as  time  was  to  show,  was  to  prove  of  con- 
siderable importance  in  our  narrative.  Not  hearing  from 
Hopkins,  the  Eaton  party,  leaving  behind  at  Boston  such 
members  as  elected  to  stay  there,  and  adding  others  who 
wished  to  leave  Salem  and  Plymouth  and  Boston  under  the 
new  leadership,  set  out  for  Quinnipiac  in  March,  1638. 
On  April  10  they  had  rejoined  the  pioneers,  whom  they 
found  living  in  mere  earth  cellars  and  half  starved,  and 
John  Davenport  preached  his  first  sermon  on  his  own  soil, 


26 


The  Beginnings  of  Yale 


finally  safe  from  the  persecutions  of  a  Laud,  and  free  to 
build  his  own  church-state,  unattached  to  the  Enghsh 
Church  and  Crown  and  unentangled  with  any  of  the  Puritan 
congregations  then  on  New  World  soil.^ 


IV 

It  is  a  point  worth  noting  that  the  Calvinistic  society  that 
John  Davenport  now  founded  on  New  Haven  soil  differed 
much  more  from  the  neighboring  democratic  commonwealth 
that  Thomas  Hooker  had  begun  in  the  Connecticut  Colony 
than  it  did  from  Massachusetts.  The  Massachusetts  state 
and  church  were  all  but  identical.  The  leaders  there  had 
clung  to  the  old  English  idea  of  a  government  of  a  Christian 
church  by  Christians.    And  they  had  the  old  English  social 

1  The  traditional  site  of  this  landing  of  John  Davenport  at  New  Haven 
is  the  northeast  corner  of  College  and  George  Streets.  The  creek  to  this 
spot,  up  which  the  New  Haven  settlers  sailed  from  the  harbor,  was  a  navi- 
gable stream  far  into  the  18th  Century.  Fairly  recent  excavations  have 
unearthed  ancient  boats  and  crude  docks  used  by  Davenport's  successors. 


The  New  Haven  Colonists  27 

feeling  for  an  aristocracy.  In  that  Colony  the  tendency  was 
toward  strong  governmental  centralization  in  the  Governor 
and  Council — the  counterpart,  to  them,  of  the  King  and 
Commission  at  home.  None  but  church  members  had  the 
franchise,  though  there  was  taxation  for  everybody,  whether 
communicant  or  not.  As  a  result,  there  had  grown  up,  in 
the  brief  decade  since  its  settlement,  a  somewhat  undemo- 
cratic condition  in  Massachusetts.  Influential  non-church 
members  who  had  joined  the  Colony  and  yet  retained  their 
allegiance  to  the  established  English  Church,  had  a  social 
dominance  and  standing  quite  out  of  proportion  to  their 
legal  status  in  the  community.  Out  of  this,  much  trouble 
was  later  on  to  come.  In  the  original  settlement  of  Ply- 
mouth, however,  non-church  members  were  given  the  fran- 
chise. This  was  in  full  sympathy  with  the  far-sighted  views 
of  that  most  distinguished  of  New  England  settlers,  Thomas 
Hooker,  who,  therefore,  in  founding  his  Connecticut  Colony 
at  Windsor  and  Hartford  and  Wethersfield,  broke  away 
from  the  Massachusetts  theory  and,  following  the  Plymouth 
idea,  made  no  distinction,  so  far  as  the  suffrage  went,  be- 
tween church  and  non-church  members. 

This  fundamental  question  was  not  decided  by  the  New 
Haven  colonists  for  a  full  year.  When  it  was  determined  to 
adhere  to  the  Massachusetts  plan,  it  was  the  decision  of  the 
entire  body  of  colonists,  and  therefore  of  those  who  had 
separated  from  the  Church  of  England  and  those  who  had 
not.  This  was  decided  at  the  famous  meeting  in  Mr.  New- 
man's barn^  in  June,  1639,  where  the  whole  plan  for  the 
government  of  New  Haven  was  adopted  in  public  meeting. 
At  this  meeting  (a  full  report  of  which  has  been  preserved) 
John  Davenport  spared  no  pains  to  have  it  known  how  he 
felt  about  the  matter,  and  how  he  emphatically  stood  with 

1  This  was  on  Grove  Street,  at  about  the  foot  of  Hillhouse  Avenue. 


28  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

John  Cotton  and  John  Winthrop  on  it.  Indeed,  he  had  set 
this  forth  in  an  essay,  which  he  had  written  during  that 
first  year  of  general  discussion  of  the  policy  to  be  pursued, 
and  which,  as  a  treatise  on  "Civil  Government  in  a  New 
Plantation  whose  Design  is  Religion,"  he  afterwards  pub- 

'  ^^  lished.  The  opposition 

d^^^a/b2A^C>TJU.'  to      his     plan      from 

^'"'"^''^'^^  among    the    consider- 

^ — -""""^  able  number  of  New 

Haven  planters  who  had  not  yet  left  the  English  Church, 
was  led  by  Theophilus  Eaton's  brother,  the  Rev.  Samuel 
Eaton,  who,  while  a  nonconformist  in  England,  had  not 
left  the  Church  and  in  fact  was  to  end  his  life  years  later 
still  a  clergyman  in  it.  There  was  a  prolonged  debate.  The 
"rules  held  forth  in  the  Scripture"  being  first  unanimously 
adopted  as  the  only  laws  of  the  new  colony,  the  franchise 
problem  was  finally  decided  (Samuel  Eaton  alone  dissent- 
ing) by  agreeing  "that  church  members  only  shall  be  free 
burgesses,  and  that  they  only  shall  choose  magistrates  and 
officers  among  themselves." 

This  was  a  momentous  decision  for  the  Colony  of  which 
Theophilus  Eaton  now  became  the  Governor  and  John 
Davenport  the  pastor,  and  for  the  generations  of  their  suc- 
cessors. It  differentiated,  at  the  start,  the  purposes  of  New 
Haven  from  those  of  the  Connecticut  Colony.  It  set  John 
Davenport's  New  Haven  Colony  in  fundamental  harmony, 
so  far  as  its  religious  framework  went,  with  Massachusetts. 
It  went  even  further  than  that.  It  produced  a  unique  inde- 
pendence, religious  and  political,  for  its  citizens.  Creating 
a  church-state  as  it  did,  wherein  there  was  little  or  no  dis- 
tinction between  the  two,  and  where  the  Mosaic  Law  was 
the  only  legal  court,  it  led,  as  we  shall  see,  to  a  society  that 
was  under  obligations  to  perpetuate  itself  and  that,  to  meet 
those   obligations,   had  to   adopt  methods,   particularly  in 


The  New  Haven  Colonists 


29 


education,  which  are  to  be  of  much  significance  in  our 
chronicles.  It  was  to  lead  to  a  situation  where  the  conserva- 
tives of  another  Connecticut  generation  were  to  find  them- 
selves on  the  side  of  a  similar  party  in  Massachusetts  and  to 
hark  back  to  the  fundamental  principles  of  this  religious 
organization  of  John  Davenport's  New  Haven  in  their 
renewed  efforts  for  orthodoxy. 


ayenpmi 


CHAPTER  III 


THE  NEW  HAVEN  CHURCH-STATE 


I 


F  the  ambition  of  John  Davenport 
had  thus  been  satisfied  to  found  a 
church-state  of  his  own,  the  ambition 
of  his  fellow  colonists  to  establish  a 
New  World  trading  metropolis  was 
now  to  be  met.  It  had  been  for  this 
purpose  that  Eaton's  London  col- 
leagues had  decided  with  him  upon 
Quinnlplac,  with  Its  wide  harbor  spreading  southward  Into 
the  Sound.  John  Brockett,  a  young  London  surveyor  who 
had  followed  Eaton  in  the  hope  of  making  the  fair  daughter 
of  one  of  the  settlers  his  wife,  now  staked  out  the  town  with 
Eaton's  large  plan  In  view. 

West  of  the  modern  Meadow  Street  and  east  of  State, 
when  the  settlers  arrived,  were  two  broad,  navigable  creeks, 
the  one  running  to  beyond  where  College  Street  now  Inter- 


The  New  Haven  Church-State  31 

sects  George,  and  the  other  paralleling  the  present  State  to 
Elm.  The  lovelorn  Brockett  based  his  boundaries  on  these 
creeks,  laying  out  the  town  in  a  half-mile  square  subdivided 
into  nine  equal  squares  or  "quarters,"  the  innermost  of 
which,  now  the  Green,  was  to  become  the  "Market-place" 
of  the  future  metropolis.  Cellars  dug  on  the  western 
creek's  inner  banks  and  covered  by  rough-hewn  planks  and 
leaky  sod,  with  a  few  log  cabins  and  barns,  did  for  houses 
for  the  first  few  months.  It  was  doubtless  in  one  of  these 
that  the  infant  Michael  Wigglesworth  (that  "Little  Feeble 
Shadow  of  a  Man,"  as  Cotton  Mather  called  him,  and  later 
lurid  poet  of  "The  Day  of  Doom")  nearly  caught  an  early 
death  from  exposure.  Very  likely  that  "easiest  room  in 
Hell,"  which  later  he  was  sympathetically  to  set  aside  for 
unbaptized  infants  in  his  verses  on  the  Hereafter,  may  have 
had  its  origin  in  a  remembrance  of  this  early  New  Haven 
home  of  his  father.  But  this  was  in  1638.  Within  a  few 
years  the  settlement  had  come  to  be  a  village  of  perhaps  a 
hundred  comfortable  houses,  sprinkled  over  the  eight  out- 
side squares,  about  which  were  the  burned  and  cleared 
meadows  or  uplands,  protection  alike  against  prowling 
Indian  or  Dutch  and  the  packs  of  wolves  that  infested  the 
neighborhood.  The  central  square,  or  "Market-place,"  a 
sloping  tract  of  woodland  at  first,  was  early  cleared  of  most 
of  its  wood  for  the  Meeting-house,  the  schoolhouse,  and  the 
public  fences,  and  remained  a  sandy  waste,  dotted  with 
stumps  and  a  few  remaining  ancient  trees,  except  at  what 
is  now  the  Church  Street  side,  where  there  was  a  swamp  out 
of  which  trickled  a  brook  to  the  State  Street  creek.  Across 
this  bog,  at  the  present  corner  of  Chapel  and  Church 
Streets, — then  "Mr.  Thomas  Gregson's  corner," — was 
built  a  footbridge,  and  two  log  causeways  led  over  it  to  the 
Meeting-house  and  schoolhouse  from  the  "Mill  Highway," 
now  Church  Street.     This  Meeting-house,  a  rude,  square 


32  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

structure,  with  a  hipped  roof  on  the  apex  of  which  was  a 
square  watchman's  turret,  stood  in  probably  the  precise 
center  of  the  Market-place.  On  this  turret  the  broad- 
brimmed  town  drummer  lustily  beat  the  community  to 
church  on  Sabbath  days,  and  on  occasions  of  Dutch  or 
Indian  alarms  sentries  stood  there  all  day  and  all  night, 
ready  to  fire  the  signal  for  the  town  watch.  North  of  the 
Meeting-house  was  the  schoolhouse.  On  the  modern  Col- 
lege Street  side,  about  opposite  the  present  Phelps  Gateway 
to  the  University,  were  the  town  stoclcs  and  pillory.  Here 
also  were  the  town  gaol  and  the  watch-house,  the  latter  a 
great-chimnied,  one-story  building,  wherein  the  watch  not 
infrequently  fell  asleep  and  were  haled  ingloriously  before 
the  Colony  Governor  and  magistrates  therefor.  About  the 
primitive  Meeting-house,  by  1650,  a  few  graves  had  been 
dug  for  the  early  victims  of  the  rigorous  change  from  the 
mild  English  winters. 

Little  as  we  perhaps  are  apt  to  realize  it,  this  ancient  New 
Haven  was  a  fortified  town,  as  well  protected  against  its 
enemies  as  was  John  Davenport's  Coventry  from  Charles 
I's  tyrannical  soldiery.  About  the  entire  plantation  was 
probably  a  stockade^  of  sharpened  palings,  or  "palisadoes," 
set  close  together   and  perhaps  seven   feet  high,   through 

1 1  am  adopting  Levermore's  statement  on  this  open  question.  It  is  not 
precisely  known  whether  New  Haven  had  such  a  stockade  or  not.  Branford 
had  a  five-mile  outer  fence,  and  Milford  was  stockaded.  As  to  New  Haven, 
the  Colony  Records  of  1639  have  a  vote:  "Ordered  that  gates  shalbe  made 
att  the  end  of  every  streete  att  the  outside  of  the  Towne,  wth  all  ye  outside 
fences."  This  outer  fence,  or  "Town  pale,"  appears  to  have  been  kept  up 
at  public  or  common  expense,  whereas  the  "Quarters'  "  fences  were  privately 
maintained.  Barber,  in  his  "Antiquities  of  New  Haven,"  recalls  an  ancient 
gate  across  West  Chapel  Street  six  rods  west  of  York,  which  may  have 
been  a  last  survivor  of  this  pioneer  palisade.  The  question  is  an  open  one, 
but  the  small  evidence  available  points  perhaps  to  the  fact  of  such  a 
stockade.  A  second  stockade  was  erected  in  1676,  when  the  Indian  wars 
became  serious. 


The  New  Hayen  Church-State  33 

which  great  chained  gates  led  into  the  open  farmlands  and 
woods  without.  Each  of  the  eight  "quarters"  was  fenced 
off  from  the  streets  by  a  paling,  doubtless  of  rough-split  logs 
five  or  so  feet  high,  while,  in  a  year  or  two,  the  house-lots 
themselves  were  separated  by  high  "rail"  fences,  built  of 
three  or  five  broad  planks  laid  against  heavy  posts.  The 
passer-by  on  the  cleared  sandy  lanes  of  this  primitive  New 
Haven  may  well  have  thought  himself  in  a  fortified  maze, 
able,  as  he  must  have  been,  hardly  to  look  over  the  house- 
lot  stockades  into  the  gardens,  within  which,  among  their 
fruit  trees  and  under  their  virgin-forest  oaks  and  button- 
woods  and  elms,  nestled  the  weather-beaten  clapboarded 
houses  of  the  planters. 

William  Hubbard,  New  England's  quaint  contemporary 
chronicler,  was  a  youth  when  Davenport's  Puritan  Separa- 
tists settled  New  Haven.  Passing  through  the  village  a 
little  later,  he  was  astonished  at  the  size  and  architectural 
excellence  of  some  of  the  houses.  "Fair  and  stately,"  he 
reported  these  to  be,  "wherein  they  at  first  outdid  the  rest 
of  the  country."  Hubbard  thought  that  the  London  immi- 
grants at  Quinnipiac  had  spent  too  much  on  these  houses. 
But  the  New  Haven  settlers  had  been  London  tradesmen 
or  farmers  in  comfortable  English  villages, — some  of  them 
well-to-do  men, — and  they  built  their  new  homes  as  closely 
as  possible  after  the  English  town  and  village  style  to  which 
they  had  been  accustomed.  Among  these  were  a  few  log 
cabins,  no  doubt,  and  numerous  small,  one-room  houses, 
steep-roofed  for  sleeping  lofts  above.  But  there  were  a 
number  of  larger  houses,  two  stories  high,  with  second  floors 
projecting  a  little  over  the  first  as  was  the  fashion  in 
English  towns.  And,  as  in  the  old  country,  so  in  Daven- 
port's New  Haven,  the  windows  of  these  houses  were  gen- 
erally diamond-paned,  while  the  doors  were  in  two  parts, 
opening  outward  from  the  narrow  front  stair  entry.    Huge 


The  New  Haven  Church-State  35 

stone  chimneys  stood  in  the  middle  of  these  larger  houses, 
on  either  side  of  which  were  the  "hall"  and  kitchen,  and  the 
"parlor."  In  all  of  the  gardens  were  well  sweeps,  and 
nearly  every  householder  had  his  small  thatched  barn. 

There  were,  however,  several  very  large  houses  in  this 
early  New  Haven.  Four  of  these, — Governor  Eaton's, 
Mr.  Davenport's,  Thomas  Gregson's,  and  Isaac  AUer- 
ton's, — were  probably  unequaled  in  any  of  the  other  three 
New  England  Colonies.  Mr.  Davenport's,  which  faced 
north  on  the  present  Elm  Street,  below  Orange,  was  built 
in  the  form  of  a  cross,  and  had,  so  tradition  later  said,  thir- 
teen fireplaces.  Mr.  Allerton's,  which  was  built  later  and 
just  below  State  Street,  was  similar  in  shape,  with  "four 
porches"  or  doorways  in  the  four  ells.^  Governor  Eaton's, 
which  faced  Mr.  Davenport's  nearly  across  Elm  Street, 
had  at  least  ten  fireplaces,  not  counting  more  in  the  attic 
rooms.  This  was  a  famous  house  for  those  days.  It  was 
in  the  not  uncommon  English  country  style  of  a  capital  E, 
its  two  ells  forming  a  small  court  facing  the  street.  The 
front  door  opened  directly  into  a  great  "hall,"  furnished 
with  an  immense  "drawing"  table  and  forms,  at  which  the 
family  probably  met  for  meals,  and  about  which  the  Colony 
General  Court  no  doubt  sat,  in  front  of  a  yawning  stone 
fireplace,  for  its  frequent  sessions.  In  the  west  ell  was  a 
"parlor"  or  state  guest-chamber  for  distinguished  travelers, 
and,  in  the  rear,  a  library  or  "office."  Here  the  Governor 
of  the  little  republic  held  his  daily  prayers  with  his  numerous 
family  and  relations  (Elihu  Yale's  father,  David  Yale,  lived 
with  Eaton  until  he  removed  to  Boston  in  1649),  and  here 

1  There  is  a  good  account  of  these  early  New  Haven  houses  in  Lambert's 
history  of  the  Colony,  and  an  exhaustive  study  of  the  Eaton  house  in  the 
"Early  Connecticut  Houses"  by  Isham  and  Brown.  The  drawings  in  this 
book  of  Davenport's  period  have  been  modeled  on  Isham's  studies  of  con- 
temporary Connecticut  Colony  houses,  which  were  not  essentially  different, 
he  thinks,  from  New  Haven's. 


36  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

he  received  his  callers  on  public  business  and  for  the  numer- 
ous demands  that  were  made  on  him  to  settle  private 
quarrels  and  correct  the  wayward  of  the  village.  In  the  east 
ell  were  the  kitchen  and  buttery  or  milkroom,  back  of  which 
were  his  gardens  and  fruit  orchards  and  hedged  flower 
beds. 

The  inventories  of  this  early  day  show  that  many  of  the 
people  lived  in  a  very  fair  degree  of  comfort.  Probably 
few  were  as  impoverished  as  one  planter  who,  in  selling  his 
house,  could  trump  up  only  a  bedstead  and  trundlebed,  "a 
pair  of  vallance,  a  piece  of  blue  charnix,  a  malt-mill,  a  well 
bucket  and  chayne,  two  loads  of  clay,"  and  his  fences  to  sell 
with  it.  Governor  Eaton's  belongings  were  of  a  high  order. 
He  had  "round"  and  "short"  tables,  "green  cushions," 
"sideboards,"  a  "great  chair  with  needlework,"  low  and 
"high  wyne"  stools,  books,  a  globe  and  map,  tapestries  on 
his  walls,  and  "Turkey  carpets,"  which  had  just  come  into 
fashion  in  England,  and  which  were  used  either  for  floor 
coverings  or  on  the  tables.  His  "great  hall"  was  filled  with 
heavy  pieces  of  old  English-made  furniture,  and  was  orna- 
mented with  much  silver  plate,  a  wall-clock,  and  with  the 
silver  basin  and  ewer  which  Mrs.  Eaton  had  years  before 
been  given  by  her  husband's  colleagues  in  his  Baltic  Sea 
adventures.  In  this  great  house,  in  which,  it  was  said, 
there  were  thirty  people  altogether.  Governor  Theophilus 
Eaton  was  accustomed  to  spend  most  of  his  day,  reading 
and  at  his  private  devotions,  or  receiving  the  people  of  his 
Colony  and  dealing  out,  as  English  squires  did  in  their  own 
halls,  the  magisterial  justice  that  devolved  upon  him,  which 
in  his  case  meant  settling  matters  by  the  Mosaic  law. 

II 

We  may  get  a  very  good  notion  of  how  John  Davenport's 
colonists  lived,  by  poring  over  the  wills  and  inventories  of 


The  New  Haven  Church-State  37 

the  time,  and  the  musty  pages  of  the  Colony  Court  records, 
open  to  us  in  the  cramped  but  still  legible  handwriting  of 
Secretary  Thomas  Fugill.  The  life  within  the  town  stock- 
ade was  a  drowsy  one,  enlivened  only  by  the  military  train- 
ing-days and  elections,  visits  of  trading  vessels  or  travelers 
from  the  Bay,  frequent  searches  for  lost  cattle,  Sabbath-day 
meetings,  and  the  numerous  public  punishments  of  male- 
factors at  the  town  pillory  and  stocks.  Inside  the  great 
paling  the  village  was  compact  and  fortified;  outside,  there 
were  the  commons  and  allotted  farms  and  fenced-in  pasture 
lands  for  oxen  and  cows,  the  town  pound  (which  was  at 
State  and  Chapel  Streets),  the  fenced-in  lot  for  "straingers' 
horses"  (which  was  about  where  Hillhouse  Avenue  joins 
Grove  Street),  and  the  distant  wigwams  of  the  Indians  in 
East  Haven.  The  streets  were  not  named,  except  that  north 
Church  Street  was  known  as  the  "Mill  Highway,"  leading 
as  it  did  to  the  flour  mill  near  East  Rock,  and  north  State 
Street  the  "Clay  Pitts  Way,"  leading  to  the  Quinnipiac 
meadows  where  the  settlers  very  early  had  discovered  clay 
deposits  for  their  brick.  The  block  on  Elm  from  Church  to 
State  was  known  as  "Mr.  Eaton's  Street";  that  on  Chapel 
opposite  the  Market-place  as  "Mr.  Goodyear's";  the  mod- 
ern prosperous  Chapel  Street,  near  State,  began  as  a 
neglected  ditch  road,  known  merely  as  "the  lane  that  leadeth 
to  Zuriel  Kimberley's  house";  the  street  intersections  were 
known  as  "Mr.  Perry's  corner,"  or  "Mr.  Evance's,"  or 
"Mr.  Tench's."  There  was  a  landing  place  far  up  George 
Street  near  High, — just  a  step  beyond  where  the  settlers 
had  first  set  foot  on  Quinnipiac  soil, — and  another  on  State 
at  the  foot  of  Chapel,  opposite  the  pound.  The  main 
landing  for  larger  vessels,  however,  was  outside  of  the 
village  itself,  on  the  present  Water  Street  bank  of  the 
harbor,  and  at  the  old  Indian  "Oyster-shell  Fields,"  where 
the  water  was  rather  higher  than  it  is  today.     Here  the 


38  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

Bay  ships  unloaded  their  supplies  of  cattle  and  meat  and  the 
latest  English  fashions,  and  here  the  great  people  of  the 
Colonies  stepped  upon  John  Davenport's  New  Haven  soil 
from  the  shallops  or  lighters  that  at  long  intervals  carried 
passengers  back  and  forth  from  Hartford  and  Saybrook, 
Milford  and  Stamford,  and  across  the  Sound  to  Southold. 
Visitors  on  horseback  came  into  the  town  from  the  east 
over  the  "Neck"  bridge  at  State  Street,  and  from  Milford 
way  over  the  West  River  bridge.  There  appear  to  have 
been  few  horses  in  the  early  days,  but  later  these  were 
numerous  and  occasioned  many  squabbles  between  rival 
claimants.  The  Colony  eventually  ordered  each  town  to 
maintain  two  or  more  horses,  with  saddles  and  pistols,  for 
travelers  on  public  business. 

The  New  Haven  people  of  these  early  times  were  not 
so  solemn  a  folk  in  their  everyday  life  as  we  sometimes 
imagine  them,  or  as  the  renegade  Peters  described  them  to 
ready-eared  English  readers  after  the  Revolutionary  War. 
Despite  the  rigid  laws  and  religious  regulations  and  beliefs 
under  which  they  lived,  the  citizens  of  Davenport's  small 
republic  were  not  entirely  depressed  by  them.  Now  and 
then  there  were  gay  times  after  the  good-night  drum,  and 
late  tipplers  would  feel  their  way  home  In  the  dense  black- 
ness by  the  "quarters'  palings"  to  escape  the  watch;  there 
were  "watermllllon"  moonlight  escapades  by  the  young 
people  in  this  or  that  Goodman's  garden,  and  youthful 
"dalliances"  and  what  not.  But  the  routine  life  of  the  plan- 
tation was  not  very  exciting.  Out  from  the  ancient  records 
step  the  vigorous-bodied  and  dignified  planters  in  their 
square-cut  doublets  and  "mandlllions"  and  their  broad- 
brimmed  sugar-loaf  Puritan  hats,  in  their  shapely  half-hose 
and  laced  shoes,  their  waist  girdles,  and  their  cloaks  of 
white,  red,  or  black  stuffs.  Quaint  replicas  of  their  fathers 
are  the  youngsters  of  the  village,  In  their  stiff  little  knee- 


■*cfX"'' ^-^^/'      faurah    SfrectJ         "-^±7/         '^^  M  ^h.ay^^ 


Mr  Cheeter's 


Tou.nJ' 


40  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

breeches,  double  jackets,  broad  hats  and  laced  shoes.  Not 
too  garish  in  dress  were  the  matrons  and  maids  of  Daven- 
port's colony,  in  their  high  hats  and  broad  white  collars  and 
quiet-colored  gowns,  over  which  they  wore  their  many- 
pocketed  aprons,  though  now  and  then  one  of  these  good 
wives  would  wear  green  stockings  or  a  scarlet  cloak,  or 
would  trade  her  beeswax  or  "pease"  for  the  latest  fashions 
in  embroidered  colored  petticoats  that  the  traders  brought 
from  the  Bay. 

But  it  is  at  their  work  and  public  duties  that  we  may  best 
recall  these  sturdy  pioneers.  Houses  and  fences  were  to  be 
built,  and  so  there  was  at  first  great  felling  of  trees  on  the 
Market-place  and  streets  and  in  the  house-lots,  and  then  in 
the  forests  outside  the  town,  where  farmlands  had  to  be 
cleared  for  corn  plantations  and  for  cattle  pastures.  Boats 
and  canoes  were  needed,  and  small  sailing  vessels ;  chimneys 
of  stone,  now  and  then  brick-topped  as  the  workmen  began 
to  use  the  Quinnipiac  clay  pits,  were  necessary;  hay  and 
straw,  grain,  pork  and  beef  had  to  be  stored  against  the 
long  and  famined  winters.  And  so,  as  the  years  slip  by,  we 
see  the  men  and  grown  boys  in  Thomas  Fugill's  ancient 
pages  at  work  building  and  repairing  the  bridges  and  palings 
and  houses,  planting  that  corn  which  Winthrop  wrote  to  his 
wife  made  a  Paradise  of  New  England,  working  in  their 
fruit  tree  orchards  (the  New  Haveners  were  great  fruit 
growers)  or  gardens  or  in  the  fields  outside,  harvesting, 
tending  the  cattle  and  "haunting"  the  hogs,  and  cutting 
wood  in  the  surrounding  forests  where  today  a  broad, 
modern  city  crowds  the  whole  plain  between  the  two  great 
Rocks.  Planters,  joiners,  plasterers,  bricklayers,  ships- 
carpenters,  tanners,  coopers,  mowers,  cattle-herds,  thatch- 
ers, — were  these  first  settlers.  Twelve  hours  was  a  man's 
day's  work  in  summer  and  eight  in  winter,  while  the  women 
and  girls  managed  the  households,  taught  the  little  chaps 


The  New  Haven  Church-State  41 

their  letters,  spun  wool  and  flax  in  the  special  rooms  set 
apart  for  these  gossipy  occasions,  tended  the  geese  and 
chickens  and  bees,  and  made  the  woolen  and  leathern 
clothes  for  themselves  and  husbands. 

And  now  comes  the  watch,  that  had  to  keep  a  martial  eye 
open  for  invaders  of  the  calm  of  the  little  stockaded  repub- 
lic, to  look  out  for  chimney  fires  at  night,  to  see  that  each 
householder  kept  his  ladder  against  his  thatched  or  shingled 
roof  day  and  night  and  a  "fire  hook"  handy,  to  corral  late 
wayfarers  along  the  high-walled  lanes,  and  to  apprehend 
cheerful  sailors  or  servants  who  might  have  had  too  many 
"strong  watters"  at  Mr.  Andrews'  or  Mr.  Harriman's 
ordinary.  The  drummer  beats  at  sundown  for  the  watch  to 
prepare;  the  master  of  the  watch  goes  to  the  watch-house, 
and  an  hour  after  sundown  the  six  watchmen  have  to  follow, 
arms  complete  with  pike  and  sword  and  musket.  In  pairs 
these  watchmen  then  patrol  the  village  all  night,  up  and 
down  the  lanes  and  inside  and  outside  of  the  town  paling, 
so  go  the  orders.  They  are  to  shout  "Fire!"  or  "Arms, 
Arms,  all  the  Town  out!"  as  necessity  dictates,  and  lug  to 
the  watch-house  any  suspicious  persons  for  appearance  be- 
fore Governor  Eaton  the  next  Colony  Court  day.  The 
great  public  business  of  the  colonists,  however,  is  the  train- 
ing-day on  the  Market-place.  This  comes  on  "Quarter- 
days."  Two  hundred  men  formed  this  military  company, 
each  settler  over  sixteen  years  of  age  having  his  obligatory 
share  in  the  maneuvers.  A  martial  sight  it  is,  no  doubt,  as 
we  visualize  it  from  the  old  Court  Records.  First  come  the 
town  drummers  and  the  company  secretary,  to  take  their 
places  near  the  Meeting-house,  where  the  roll  of  the 
assembly  drum  brings  the  soldiers  from  all  quarters.  And 
now  out  troop  the  companies, — "squadrons,"  as  they  are 
called, — headed  by  the  sturdy  Captain  Turner,  veteran  of 
the  Pequot  wars,  sword  in  hand,  his  cloak,  lined  with  scarlet. 


42 


The  Beginnings  of  Yale 


thrown  martially  over  one  shoulder,  his  eye  fired  perhaps 
by  remembrances  of  the  recent  Indian  battles  over  Pequot 
way.  Then  comes  Lieutenant  Seely  with  his  "partison,"  and 
the  Ensign  with  the  Colony  colors.  The  "squadrons,"  with 
their  sergeants  and  corporals,  round  the  sandy  public  square 
to  the  beat  of  the  two  company  drummers.  Terrifying  they 
may  look  to  the  wide-eyed  Quinnipiac  Indians  who  have 
slipped  quietly  through  the  great  clanking  gates  of  the 
stockade  to  witness  these  astonishing  maneuvers  of  their 
white-faced  invaders.  Boldly  the  "squadrons"  troop  about 
the  square,  each  private  in  his  best  yellow  buckskin  breeches, 
high  hat,  iron  breastplate  and  flowing  cloak,  armed  with 
musket  or  pike,  with  dangling  sword,  his  "bandaleer"  carry- 
ing his  powder  and  bullets  and  round  of  "swan-shot,"  and 
on  special  occasions  wearing  the  thick  "cotton-wool"  coats 


The  New  Haven  Church-State  43 

that  the  town  has  ordered  the  women  to  quilt  for  their 
husbands'  and  sons'  protection  against  Indian  arrows. 
Grouped  about  the  open  Market-place,  under  the  few  old 
trees  that  have  been  left  standing,  these  proud  dames  and 
damsels  are  no  doubt  as  frightened  as  are  the  scampering 
Indians  when  the  "Quarter-day"  parade  ends  with  the 
explosive  firing  of  the  three  "great  guns,"  the  volleys  from 
which  shake  the  wooden  houses  and  echo  over  the  sur- 
rounding woods  to  the  distant  hills.  Then  come  feats  of 
agility  and  strength  among  the  younger  soldiers  (for  the 
village  bucks  were  mighty  proud  of  their  muscles  and  the 
turn  of  their  calves), — when  they  play  at  cudgels  or  "back- 
sword," and  leap  and  "wrastle"  as  the  Colony  orders  have 
it,  and  the  great  day  ends.  A  few  years  later  a  horse  troop 
(when  the  Dutch  became  bothersome)  was  formed,  there 
was  an  artillery  company,  and,  still  later,  a  Colony  dog  pack 
to  hunt  wolves  and  track  Indians. 

But  it  is  in  the  Sabbath-day  ceremonies  at  the  Meeting- 
house that  we  seem  best  to  visualize  the  people  of  these 
early  Puritan  times,  long  sleeping  under  the  modern  Green 
or  in  the  Grove  Street  burying  ground,  in  devout  belief  of 
their  rise  to  join  Christ's  second  coming.  The  roll  of  the 
second  drum  is  reverberating  through  the  quiet  gardens  and 
up  and  down  the  sandy  lanes,  vigorously  pounded  in  the 
Meeting-house  turret  by  that  jovial  Robert  Bassett  who 
later  was  to  entertain  some  itinerant  sailors  at  his  home 
with  so  hospitable  a  decanter  that  he  was  fined  five  pounds 
and  later  left  for  Stamford,  there  to  lead  in  mutinous  out- 
breaks against  the  Jurisdiction.  Walking  sedately  across 
the  Market-place  from  their  homes  and  those  "Sabbath-day 
houses"  that  the  country  people  built  for  their  Sabbath 
noons  in  New  Haven,  come  these  pioneer  Puritans  of  New 
Haven.  Captain  Turner,  sword  in  hand,  waits  at  one  of 
the  low,  square  doors  of  the  first  Meeting-house,  to  place 


44  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

the  guard  for  the  day  within  and  the  sentry  without.  And 
now  come  the  shadowy  forms  of  the  planters.  Ezekiel 
Cheever,  in  broad  flowing  cloak  and  high  hat  and  starched 
neckband,  comes  up  Church  Street  with  his  wife  and  boy 
from  his  cabin  at  Church  and  Grove  Streets.  Governor 
Eaton,  supporting  his  now  aged  mother,  moves  majestically, 
as  becomes  the  first  magistrate  of  this  New  World  republic, 
up  Elm  Street  and  over  the  made  causeway  from  "Mr. 
Perry's  corner,"  his  numerous  family  and  servants,  and  the 
future  father  of  Elihu  Yale  behind  him.  Then  come  the 
other  settlers:  from  the  Clay  Pitts  Way  Magistrate  Malbon, 
once  a  prosperous  London  merchant  and  now  expecting 
great  things  from  New  Haven  trading  enterprises  he  is 
financing,  from  his  large  house  on  State  Street  fronting  the 
not  far-distant  harbor;  old  Thomas  Nash,  once  a  Puritan 
refugee  in  Leyden,  and  now  the  official  Colony  gunsmith; 
Anthony  Thompson,  Lenham  village  merchant;  John  Ben- 
ham,  brickmaker  and  town-crier;  Goodman  Kimberley, 
poundkeeper;  Deacon  Gilbert,  from  his  spacious  house  at 
Church  and  Chapel  Streets;  Nicholas  Augur,  the  town  dis- 
penser of  physic;  the  impecunious  William  Preston,  whose 
large  family  of  children  are  mostly  kept  alive  by  his  wife's 
earnings  in  "dressing"  the  Meeting-house.  Then  come 
Deputy  Governor  Goodyear,  former  London  trader,  and 
Thomas  Gregson,  now  one  of  the  Colony's  most  energetic 
business  men,  from  their  adjoining  houses  on  Chapel  Street 
opposite  the  Market-place;  young  Joshua  Atwater,  late  of 
Kent,  and  now  treasurer  of  the  Colony,  from  his  great 
mansion  where  Osborn  Hall  now  stands;  tottering  old 
Edward  Wigglesworth,  with  his  small  son  Michael  the 
coming  poet,  from  Chapel  Street  near  the  present  High; 
Thomas  Fugill  and  Corporal  Bell,  Ensign  Newman  and 
William  Andrews  the  tavern  keeper,  and  Goodman  this 
and  Goodwife  that,  until  all  of  the  small  community  are 


The  New  Haven  Church-State  45 

grouped  about  the  Meeting-house  door,  on  the  broad  nailed 
panels  of  which  the  latest  bans  of  marriage  and  notices  of 
estates  that  are  before  the  Colony  Court  have  been  put  up 
by  the  Secretary.  And  now  the  Rev.  William  Hooke,  the 
Teacher  of  the  church,  in  his  flowing  ministerial  gown, 
comes  alone  down  through  the  footpath  under  the  trees  from 
the  College  and  Chapel  Streets  corner  of  the  Market-place, 
his  thoughts,  perhaps,  as  much  on  his  great  cousin  Crom- 
well's possible  patronage  if  he  should  return  to  England, 
as  on  the  two-hour  prayer  he  is  to  make  that  morning.  And 
then  the  people  turn  their  faces  across  the  open  square  to 
"Mr.  Davenport's  Walk,"  that  has  been  fenced  off  for  his 
use  between  two  Church  Street  open  lots  where  the  present 
City  Hall  stands.  The  once  famous  preacher  of  the  London 
church  in  Coleman  Street  comes  slowly  out  from  his 
"Walk,"  across  the  log  causeway  that  has  been  laid  over  the 
bog  for  his  comfort,  and  to  his  waiting  flock,  unspoken  to  by 
anyone  on  this  great  day  of  the  Colony  week.  Slowly  he 
walks,  in  gown  and  small  black  skullcap,  Bible  in  hand. 
Through  the  silent  ranks  of  his  congregation  he  passes  in 
through  the  rough-hewn  door  and  up  the  broad  center  aisle 
of  his  crude  new  church,  to  the  raised  pulpit  under  the 
sounding-board  of  the  day.  Mrs.  Eaton  and  the  Governor 
follow,  the  congregation  troops  in,  each  man  wearing  his 
hat  except  when  the  opening  prayer  is  pronounced,  the  im- 
portant families  take  their  benches  in  order  of  Colony  rank, 
men  on  one  side  and  women  on  the  other,  and  the  children 
scatter  to  the  pulpit  stairs  or  sides  of  the  bare  room  (where 
they  make  so  much  trouble  that  oflScers  have  to  be  appointed 
to  keep  them  in  order)  and  the  Sabbath-day  services  begin. 
Mr.  Hooke  expounds  a  chapter  from  the  Scriptures.  The 
hourglass  on  the  high  pulpit  may  be  turned  once  or  even 
twice  before  the  central  event  of  the  Colonists'  week,  the 
sermon  by  John   Davenport,   is  over.      Mr.   Hooke   then 


The  New  Haven  Church-State  47 

prays  (and  the  prayers  of  those  days  were  nearly  as  long  as 
the  sermons),  "bills"  are  put  up  for  the  sick  and  the  absent, 
and  a  long  psalm  follows,  the  pastor  reading  each  line 
before  it  is  droned  out  by  the  congregation.  The  short 
noon  hour  over,  the  Meeting-house  is  filled  again  for  the 
afternoon  service.  Mr.  Hooke  now  preaches,  and  Mr. 
Davenport  prays,  there  is  one  more  long  psalm,  and  the 
wearied  and  not  infrequently  half-frozen  people  return  to 
their  candle-lit  homes  and  firesides  to  meditate  on  the  great 
words  they  have  heard  during  the  day,  and  the  children  to 
repeat  the  heads  of  the  preacher's  discourse  from  memory. 

Ill 

An  earnestly  pious  people  were  these  New  Haven  settlers, 
believers  in  the  all-sufficiency  of  the  Scriptures  for  human 
needs,  individual  and  political,  building  their  church-state 
on  the  Mosaic  law  as  it  was  interpreted  by  the  Colony  magis- 
trates and  deputies.  The  "Moses"  of  New  Haven,  Cotton 
Mather  called  Governor  Eaton.  But  it  needed  another 
Solomon  to  manage  the  affairs  of  this  new  republic,  and 
Theophilus  Eaton  was  one.  Before  his  Colony  court  came 
an  extraordinary  number  of  matters  to  settle,  for  the  Colony 
officers  did  not  hesitate  to  manage  even  the  smallest  details 
of  the  planters'  lives.  A  settler  could  not  leave  the  Juris- 
diction without  written  permission;  if  a  shoemaker  was  not 
giving  good  leather  he  was  haled  before  the  court  to  answer 
for  it;  if  the  town  storekeeper  (a  Mrs.  Stolions)  over- 
charged, she  had  to  explain  and  cut  her  prices;  if  a  man's 
fence  was  down,  he  had  to  stand  trial  for  damages  his 
cattle  and  hogs  did  to  his  neighbors'  gardens  in  consequence; 
if  a  settler  "took  tobacco"  in  the  streets  or  outside  of  his 
house,  he  was  brought  before  the  court  to  pay  a  fine;  if  a 
soldier  came  to  training  without  his  full  equipment,  if  a 


48  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

watchman  slept  on  his  rounds,  if  a  laborer  broke  the  Sab- 
bath, if  a  good  wife  slandered  another  woman,  if  a  ladder 
was  not  in  its  place  against  a  house, — Governor  Eaton's 
court  decided  the  penalty.  And  these  penalties  were  severe 
ones.  Hubbard  wrote  that  the  New  Haveners  were  very 
"vigorous  in  the  execution  of  justice,  and  especially  in  the 
punishment  of  offenders."  The  town  stocks  and  pillory 
were  a  busy  place  for  a  few  days  after  each  court  meeting, 
and  many  a  careless  planter  and  servant  and  visiting  sailor 
cooled  his  legs  and  neck  on  the  board  platform  next  to  the 
watch-house  on  College  Street  to  the  gaping  entertainment 
of  the  villagers.  For  more  serious  offenses  there  were 
public  whippings  of  both  men  and  women,  and  these  were 
so  severe  that  one  unlucky  malefactor  vowed  he  would 
rather  "fall  into  the  hands  of  the  Turks"  than  be  whipped 
again.  And  they  had  other  agreeable  little  methods  of 
making  an  incorrigible  reform.  Halters  were  hung  about 
these  fellows'  necks,  and  locks  put  on  their  legs;  the  tongues 
of  slanderers  or  profane  persons  were  bored  with  hot  irons 
or  put  into  cloven  sticks;  not  a  few  offenders  against  the 
comparatively  few  capital  laws  of  the  Colony  were  publicly 
hung.  The  laws  were  the  laws  of  the  Hebrew  God,  and 
alack  for  him  who  transgressed  them.  Even  the  Deputy 
Governor  was  fined  on  one  occasion  for  having  permitted 
the  sale  of  liquors  by  an  elected  tavern  keeper  who  had  not 
yet  taken  office. 

To  us  of  today,  the  church  discipline  of  these  pioneer 
times  undoubtedly  seems  the  most  exacting.  Yet  there  was 
good  reason  for  this,  considering  the  peculiar  religious  re- 
public that  John  Davenport  had  founded.  The  New  Haven 
Jurisdiction  churches,  separate  as  they  were  from  all  other 
New  England  churches,  were  the  New  Haven  state.  The 
towns  and  Colony  political  organizations  were  but  the 
machine  by  which  this  church-state  was  supported.     None 


The  New  Haven  Church-State 


49 


but  the  regenerate  could  vote  In  town  meetings,  or  for  the 
Governor  and  magistrates  and  deputies  to  the  Colony  Court. 
Church  members  ruled  the  New  Haven  state,  and  noncon- 
formity to  the  churches  was  treason  to  the  state  itself. 

And  so  we  find  John  Davenport  extremely  alert  for  any 
Infringements  of  his  religious  authority  and  for  any  back- 
sliding from  the  obligations  of  church  membership.  He 
and  his  New  Haven  flock  were  behevers  In  witchcraft,  and 
in  the  second  coming  of  Christ.  It  Is  said  that  they  expected 
Christ  to  make  New  Haven  the  seat  of  his  second  em- 
pire,— so  the  Colony's  theological  lamp  must  be  kept 
trimmed.  So  serious  was  this  motive  In  the  New  Haven  life 
that  as  important  a  member  of  the  community  as  Governor 
Eaton's  good  lady  fell  Into  difficulties  with  Davenport  and 
was  publicly  punished  therefor.     So  earnest  was  John  Dav- 


50  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

enport  in  this  conception  of  his  duty  toward  a  pure  church 
membership  that  he  became,  in  time,  renowned  through 
New  England  for  his  severity  in  church  discipline,  and  was 
said  by  Cotton  Mather  to  "use  the  golden  snuffers  of  the 
sanctuary  overmuch."  The  more  lively  of  his  parishioners 
in  this  orthodox  New  Haven,  thus  ecclesiastically  snuffed 
out  as  occasions  arose,  doubtless  endorsed  this  sentence. 
For  they  were  brought  up  sharply  for  very  small  misdoings. 
The  Colony  Court  would  settle  a  case  of  profanity  with  dis- 
patch and  unction.  Some  unlucky  visiting  sailor,  for 
instance,  had  admitted  saying  a  round  "by  God."  The 
New  Haven  church  and  state  were  shocked.  Governor 
Eaton,  facing  the  astonished  culprit  across  his  great  table, 
vowed  that  it  was  a  manifest  "piercing  of  the  name  of 
God  in  passion,"  whereas  the  rule  of  God  was  "let  your 
words  be  yea  yea  and  nay  nay."  The  unlucky  sailor's 
tongue  was  bored  for  his  crime,  and  he  was  sent  out  of 
the  Colony  to  warn  others  not  to  be  profane  in  it. 

From  time  to  time,  in  the  old  Colony  papers,  we  find  the 
citizens  of  this  too  ideal  republic  breaking  forth  into  exas- 
perate opposition  to  this  kind  of  discipline.  It  is  an  enlight- 
ening scene  that  the  old  Court  Records  describe,  when  a 
Mrs.  Moore  is  apprehended  for  a  theological  eccentricity. 
She  had,  it  appears,  "pished"  at  the  statement  that  there 
were  "2  sorts  of  angells,  some  sperits,  some  in  flesh."  Mrs. 
Moore  thought  "angells"  were  the  only  "sperits"  and  had 
privately  given  it  forth  as  her  opinion  that  the  officers  of 
the  New  Haven  church  were  going  beyond  their  rights  in 
claiming  to  be  "angells"  of  God  "in  the  flesh."  Governor 
Eaton  rebuked  her  severely.  "Christ,"  he  said,  "was  indeed 
with  his  apostles  in  their  worke  through  all  their  travells,  & 
they  travelled  farr,  yet  could  not  goe  into  every  part  or 
country  of  the  world.  Probably  [he  said]  they  were  never 
in  this  lardge  tract  &  part  of  the  World,  called  America." 


The  New  Haven  Church-State 


51 


Therefore  Christ  had  to  be  represented  in  New  Haven  by 
"angells  in  the  flesh,"  which  office  Mr.  Davenport  and  the 
church  elders  had  humbly  succeeded  to.  Mrs.  Moore  was 
not,  however,  satisfied,  and  went  out  of  the  Governor's 
house  "in  a  great  rage,"  announcing,  with  a  fling  of  her 
independent  head,  as  she  passed  through  his  great  gate  to 
the  street,  that  "she  would  goe  to  none  of  the  church  officers 
for  any  truth  of  her  salvation."  The  case  made  a  mighty 
noise  in  the  Colony.  Others  had  from  time  to  time  burst 
their  church  bonds,  and  some  had  "pished"  at  Mr. 
Cheever's  teaching,  and  even  at  Mr.  Davenport's  business 
ability,  and  not  a  few  had  been  "sermon  sick."  But  no  one 
until  Mrs.  Moore  had  openly  flaunted  the  right  of  the 
church  elders  to  call  themselves  "angells."  A  growing  num- 
ber came  to  do  so  as  time  passed,  however,  and  that  final 
day  was  to  come  when  the  whole  question  of  the  divine 
authority  of  the  inner  church  membership  in  the  Colony  was 
to  become  a  serious  one,  and  with  it  the  question  of  the  fun- 
damental soundness  of  John  Davenport's  great  church-state 
scheme  itself. 


CHAPTER  IV 


THE  DAVENPORT  EDUCATION 


I 

N  leaving  Boston  for  the  Quinniplac 
In  1638,  John  Davenport  had  brought 
with  him  a  young  professional  school- 
master in  the  quaint  and  energetic 
person  of  that  Ezekiel  Cheever  whom 
we  have  mentioned,  and  who,  in  later 
years,  was  to  become  one  of  the  most 
famous  of  colonial  pedagogues. 
This  able  gentleman  was  at  this  time  twenty-three  years 
of  age.  He  was  a  Londoner  by  birth,  and  for  several  years 
had  been  a  private  tutor  among  the  Rev.  John  Wilson's 
flock  in  Boston.  Tradition  pictures  him  vividly  as  a  tall, 
thin  young  fellow,  whose  pointed  beard  became  a  sort  of 
animated  barometer  to  his  wary  scholars;  when  he  stroked 
this  beard  to  its  point,  the  story  goes,  his  pupils  cocked  an 
eye  for  trouble.     And  this   frequently  came    (as  Cheever 


The  Davenport  Education  53 

was  of  an  irascible  temperament)  from  unexpected  causes; 
for  not  only  did  the  first  New  Haven  schoolmaster  use  the 
alder  and  birch  rods  that  he  ominously  cut  as  he  crossed  the 
swamp  to  the  schoolhouse  of  mornings,  but  he  also  had  the 
salutary  habit  of  licking  the  good  boys  for  not  exerting  their 
influence  over  the  obstreperous  ones.  Cheever  was  an 
excellent  Latin  scholar, — a  bit  of  a  pedant,  perhaps,  if  the 
truth  were  known, — and  during  his  eleven  years  in  the  rude 
New  Haven  settlement  wrote  his  famous  "Short  Introduc- 
tion to  the  Latin  Tongue."  This,  as  the  famous  Cheever 
"Accidence,"  ran  through  twenty  editions  before  1785  and 
emerged,  for  the  last  time,  to  the  astonished  chagrin  of  still 
another  generation  of  American  youngsters,  as  late  as  1838, 
when  it  was  succeeded  by  others, — Bullions,  etc., — no  less 
formidable.  Through  this  Latin  grammar  ploughed  very 
nearly  all  of  the  college-bound  youths  of  Massachusetts  and 
Connecticut  during  the  first  century  of  Harvard  and  the  first 
half-century  of  Yale. 

Ezekiel  Cheever  had  arrived  in  Quinnipiac  with  £20  and 
two  dependents,  and  one  of  the  earliest  businesses  of  his 
fellow  townsmen,  after  the  raising  of  the  square  Meeting- 
house on  the  Market-place  and  of  the  great  mansions  of 
Davenport  and  Eaton,  appears  to  have  been  to  build  a  small 
cabin  for  him.  This  was  set  up  at  what  is  now  the  south- 
east corner  of  Grove  and  Church  Streets,  and  here  Cheever 
seems  to  have  begun  to  teach  New  Haven's  first  school.  In 
that  quaint  account  of  his  own  life  that  Michael  Wiggles- 
worth  left  to  a  laxer  and  more  critical  posterity,  he  says 
that,  having  escaped  death  in  his  father's  dug-out  cellar  on 
the  banks  of  the  creek  in  New  Haven,  he  was  sent  to  school 
in  1639  to  Ezekiel  Cheever,  "and  under  him,"  says  he, 
"profited  so  much  through  the  blessing  of  God,  that  I  began 
to  make  Latin  &  to  get  forward  apace."  This  was  probably 
in  Cheever's  own  cabin  on  Grove  Street. 


54  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

It  was  on  Christmas  Day,  1641,  that  John  Davenport 
secured  a  town  vote  to  estabhsh  the  Colony's  first  public 
school. 

I  fancy  that  we  may  set  this  date  among  the  large  events 
in  New  Haven  history.  Such  a  public  school  had  been  set 
up  in  Boston,  hardly  had  the  Winthrop  party  arrived  there. 
The  year  following,  1636,  one  had  been  established  in  the 
primitive  settlement  at  Charlestown.  The  Rev.  John 
Fiske  had  become  the  first  teacher  of  a  similar  Salem  school 
in  1637,  and  in  1639,  when  Cheever  had  begun  to  teach  in 
his  own  house  in  New  Haven,  a  public  school  had  been 
begun  at  Dorchester.  The  Cambridge  public  school  was 
to  be  established  a  year  later.  In  several  of  these  cases,  the 
school  had  even  preceded  the  church  organization  itself,  so 
anxious  were  the  Puritan  colonists  that  there  should  be  no 
interruption  in  the  upbringing  of  the  next  generation  in  their 
church. 

And  we  may  now  see  the  necessity  for  this  immediate 
beginning  of  youthful  education  in  the  colonies.  The  public 
school  and  the  grammar  school  were  no  novelty  to  the  New 
England  settlers.  The  Londoners  in  the  New  Haven  Col- 
ony had  long  been  accustomed  to  it;  their  forefathers  had 
known  it  ever  since  Dean  Colet  had  opened  his  grammar 
school  beneath  St.  Paul's  in  15 10.  Even  the  immigrants 
from  such  English  rural  villages  as  Ashford  or  Lenham,  a 
number  of  whom,  as  we  have  seen,  were  in  the  New  Haven 
party,  had  had  their  free  schools  at  home.  Among  the 
settlers  of  Massachusetts  were  some  sixty  Cambridge  Uni- 
versity graduates  and  about  a  third  as  many  Oxford  men, 
and  these  men, — now  the  leaders  in  their  new  communi- 
ties,— naturally  looked  upon  the  immediate  beginnings  of 
a  New  England  school  system  as  an  imperative  matter, 
nearly  if  not  as  important  as  the  institution  of  the  churches 
themselves. 


The  Davenport  Education  55 

But  the  movement  in  this  direction  had  an  even  deeper 
significance.  The  great  guide  to  conduct  of  the  Puritan 
element  in  the  EngHsh  Church  for  a  hundred  years  had  been 
the  Bible;  and,  as  the  Puritan  interpretation  of  religion  was 
individualistic,  so  the  reading  of  the  Bible  was  a  matter  of 
Individual  duty.  It  was  to  bring  about  this  general  ability 
to  read  the  Bible  that  those  numerous  Puritan  foundations 
had  been  established  throughout  old  England  from  which 
the  public-school  system,  leading  in  many  cases  to  the  ad- 
vanced grammar  school  with  its  study  of  the  Latin  commen- 
taries and  of  the  Greek  originals  of  the  New  Testament, 
had  grown.  Yet  the  English  school  system  was  sporadic 
and  privately  endowed,  as  in  the  famous  Hales  Free  School 
of  Coventry,  which  we  have  seen  John  Davenport  attending 
when  a  boy. 

The  Dutch  church^school  system,  on  the  other  hand, 
which  the  Plymouth  colonists  and  John  Davenport  had 
become  acquainted  with  when  in  exile  in  Holland,  was  of  a 
different  nature.  There  a  state  educational  system  had  for 
some  time  been  established.  This  was  a  compulsory  public- 
school  system,  supported  by  municipal  or  parish  taxes  in- 
stead of  by  private  donations  as  in  England.  This  novel 
and  democratic  notion  of  public  education  could  not  but 
have  made  a  strong  impression  upon  John  Davenport  when 
he  was  in  Rotterdam.  And,  during  his  short  stay  in  Boston, 
he  had  seen  the  new  plan  being  attempted,  though  perhaps 
in  no  very  definite  way  at  that  time,  in  the  first  of  the  Massa- 
chusetts public  schools.  The  general  principles  of  the  Dutch 
idea  were  now  incorporated  in  Davenport's  scheme  for  his 
New  Haven  commonwealth,  superimposed  upon  which  was 
his  own  notion  of  a  graded  system  from  the  common  school 
up  through  the  grammar  or  Latin  school  to  a  sort  of  Puritan 
"college"  similar  to  the  Harvard  which  he  had  had  a  hand 
in  planting. 


56  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

II 

Fully  to  realize  the  departure  which  John  Davenport  thus 
made  in  beginning,  in  1641,  the  New  Haven  Colony  public 
school,  and  agitating  almost  as  immediately  his  plan  for  a 
"College,"  we  may  recall  what  had  been  done  in  schooling 
matters  in  this  country  before  his  arrival.  The  Virginia 
Cavaliers,  for  example,  living  a  patriarchal  existence  on 
their  great  tobacco  plantations,  had  no  such  community  life 
as  had  the  New  England  townsfolk.  They  had  brought 
over  with  them  the  customary  English  idea  of  secondary  and 
higher  learning  for  the  youth  of  the  upper  classes  only. 
They  had  founded  no  common  schools,  as,  indeed,  their 
manner  of  life  called  for  none.  They  had  contented  them- 
selves with  importing  private  tutors  from  Cambridge  or 
Oxford  for  the  favored  sons  of  the  ruling  classes;  for  the 
poorer  children  they  had  begun  industrial  schooling  on  the 
plantations.  The  Virginia  public  sentiment,  In  fact,  was 
against  a  free  public  education.  The  colonists  there  were 
good  Church  of  England  communicants,  and,  even  at  the 
comparatively  late  date  of  1692,  when  William  and  Mary 
College  was  chartered,  their  purpose  in  it  was  to  afford  a 
colony  higher  education  for  the  sons  of  the  upper  classes 
alone.  In  Dutch  New  Amsterdam,  on  the  contrary,  the 
parochial  school  system  of  the  old  country  had  early  been 
established,  though  probably  of  the  elementary  type  in 
Holland.  In  Puritan  New  England,  both  the  stern  necessity 
of  the  churches  for  raising  the  new  generation  strictly  after 
the  religious  principles  of  the  settlers,  and  the  community 
life  which  was  at  once  begun,  centering  about  the  church,  led 
to  a  third  type  of  school,  the  purpose  of  which  was,  at  least 
at  some  public  expense,  to  bring  the  Bible  Into  the  lives  of 
the  second  generation  and  thus  to  continue  the  Puritan 
commonwealth  In  all  of  Its  original  purity  of  character. 


The  Davenport  Education 


57 


It  was  with  one  of  the  earhest  examples  of  this  last  type 
of  colonial  schools  that  John  Davenport  now  began  that 
New  Haven  educational  history,  which,  for  generations  to 
come,  was  to  be  built  up  about  a  central  religious  interest 
and  in  support  of  the  orthodoxy  of  Calvinistic  church  and 
state. 

It  was  in  accordance  with  this  fundamental  purpose  of  the 
New  Haven  education  that,  in  1641,  there  was  now  laid 
down,  in  John  Davenport's  language,  that  phrase  which  did 
duty  for  the  New  Haven  Colony  schools  for  the  next  half- 
century  and  which,  in  its  statement  of  the  intention  of  the 
school  "for  the  better  trayning  upp  of  youth  in  this  towne, 
that,  through  God's  blessing  they  may  be  fitted  for  publique 
service  hereafter,  either  in  church  or  commonweale,"  was 
to  find  its  refrain  in  the  intentions  of  Yale's  founders  some 
six  decades  afterwards. 


58  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

By  1644  the  schoolhouse  itself  had  been  erected,  and 
Ezekiel  Cheever  moved  his  Latin  books  and  his  birch  rods 
into  it.  It  was  a  one-story  slab  cabin,  this  first  New  Haven 
school,  with  a  rough  stone  chimney,  and  was  likely  enough 
furnished  (as  were  others  of  its  day)  with  the  same  kind  of 
backless  plank  seats  that  helped  to  rivet  the  older  genera- 
tion's attention  on  the  weekly  worship  at  the  Meeting-house, 
a  few  rods  further  south  on  the  Market-place.  This  school- 
house  probably  stood  just  northeast  of  the  present  United 
Church.  A  rough  cart  road,  which  has  since  become 
Temple  Street,  traversed  the  public  square  from  school- 
house  to  Meeting-house,  but  on  the  north  side,  where  now  is 
Elm  Street,  there  was  a  better  road,  flanked  by  the  high 
palings  of  the  first  Elm  Street  gardens.  Here,  until  1649, 
Ezekiel  Cheever  propelled  the  first  New  Haven  Colony 
youngsters  through  his  Latin  grammar,  and,  in  good  old 
English  schoolmaster  style  (which  held  that  every  cerebral 
impression  had  to  be  pounded  in  through  the  epidermis), 
held  the  noses  of  unwilling  smaller  chaps  to  their  elementary 
English  composition  and  Catechism  by  rod  and  cuffings. 

Ill 

As  events  were  to  show,  this  was  the  single  prosperous 
period  in  John  Davenport's  large  plans  for  his  New  Haven 
school.  Cheever  prepared  at  least  a  half  dozen  New  Haven 
youths    for   Harvard   during   these   years,    giving   them    a 


The  Davenport  Education  59 

fitting  that  was  unexcelled  throughout  the  colonies.  The 
oldest  son  of  Governor  Eaton  was  one  of  them;  the  son 
of  Isaac  Allerton,  that  wealthy  Mayflower  Pilgrim  who  had 
difficulties  at  Plymouth  and  who  had  settled  in  New  Haven 
and  was  later  to  lose  his  whole  estate  there,  was  another; 
Michael  Wigglesworth  received  his  first  lessons  under 
Cheever,  as  we  have  seen,  and  went  up  to  Harvard,  there 
to  go  through  a  fervid  religious  awakening  and,  dropping 
his  "selfish"  desire  (as  he  writes)  "for  honor  &  Prefermt 
&  such  Poor  Beggarly  ends,  learnt  to  study  with  God  &  for 
God,"  and  change  his  ambition  to  become  a  chirurgeon  to 
study  for  the  ministry.  Nathaniel  Brewster,  the  son  of  the 
Francis  Brewster  who  was  to  be  lost  on  the  famous  Lamber- 
ton  ship  from  New  Haven,  prepared  for  Harvard  at  this 
little  log-cabin  school  of  Ezekiel  Cheever's,  and  grew  up  to 
take  a  degree  at  the  University  of  Dublin  and  to  accompany 
Oliver  Cromwell's  son  to  Ireland  in  1655  as  a  Puritan 
minister  in  the  fateful  colonization  of  Ulster.  A  John 
Davis  also  went  up,  whose  Harvard  College  accounts  in 
1650  show  that  he  paid  for  his  board  and  tuition  in  wheat, 
and  once  with  "3  pecks  of  pease,"  no  doubt  shipped  by 
sailing  vessel  from  his  father's  farm  lot  in  New  Haven. 

Sadly  enough,  however,  Ezekiel  Cheever  was  scholar 
first  and  theologian  afterwards.  The  flowing-robed  Aris- 
tides  and  his  Athenian  democracy  may  very  likely  have 
seemed  to  him  a  better  human  society  than  that  of  the  black- 
gowned  John  Davenport  and  his  New  Haven  theocracy. 
The  details  of  the  trouble  are  lost  to  us,  but  by  1647  Chee- 
ver had  come  into  open  and  violent  collision  with  the  New 
Haven  church  (having  apparently  criticised  some  instances 
of  public  church  discipline)  and  was  called  before  It  for 
"his  contradictory,  stiff  and  proud  frame  of  spirit," — an 
eccentricity  that  John  Davenport  vigorously  chastised  in 
everyone  who  showed  it.    As  a  result,  the  ecclesiastical  head 


6o  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

of  Ezekiel  Cheever  was  unceremoniously  snipped  off  by  the 
golden  snuffers  of  the  sanctuary,  as  that  of  Governor 
Eaton's  good  wife  had  been  three  years  before.  Two  years 
later  Cheever  departed  in  high  dudgeon  for  Massachusetts, 
to  become  the  schoolmaster  at  Ipswich,  and  then  at  Cam- 
bridge and  Boston, — there  to  train  probably  the  largest  num- 
ber of  boys  for  Harvard  of  any  pedagogue  in  that  colony. 
He  died  at  an  advanced  age,  the  scourge  and  yet  the  single 
largest  factor,  perhaps,  in  the  lives  of  many  of  Massachu- 
setts' earliest  church  and  state  leaders.  Though  the  records 
are  scant  as  to  his  work  in  New  Haven,  we  know  what 
results  he  got  elsewhere  with  such  precocious  students  as 
John  Leverett,  the  later  president  of  Harvard,  and  with 
Cotton  Mather.  Cheever  had  brought  Cotton  Mather,  by 
^  twelve  years  of  age, 

-JP      o  fj    •  ^^Jin^  0  f?  ^^""-^    ^°  excellent  work  in 
'T^y^^'^  '  y^/i^^^^^o-'T''^    Latin    composition, 

and  to  the  point 
where  he  "conversed  with  Tully,  Terence,  Ovid,  and  Vergil, 
and  had  gone  through  his  Greek  Testament,  and  entered 
upon  Isocrates,  Homer,  and  his  Hebrew  Grammar."  If 
he  did  not  do  as  much  for  any  of  John  Davenport's  New 
Haven  youths,  it  was  doubtless  their  fault  and  not  his. 

It  was  a  serious  blow  to  Davenport's  educational  plan  for 
New  Haven,  that  so  remarkable  a  man  as  Ezekiel  Cheever 
was  forced  to  leave  the  infant  Colony.  A  very  different 
story  might  have  been  told,  I  imagine,  of  the  after  develop- 
ments of  the  New  Haven  school  had  Cheever  remained  at 
its  desk.  Higher  education  in  New  Haven  now  had  a  long 
hiatus;  it  was  thirteen  years  before  another  New  Haven 
youth  was  prepared  for  Harvard.  Founded  as  an  ideal 
human  society  in  1639,  and  to  be  conducted  as  such  by  the 
combined  theological  and  worldly  wisdom  of  Davenport  and 
Eaton,  the  rift  in  the  lute  that  the  coming  New  Haven 


The  Davenport  Education  6i 

metropolis  was  to  play  among  God's  orchestra  on  earth,  was 
shown  thus  early  in  Ezekiel  Cheever's  case,  as  it  had  been, 
a  few  years  previously,  in  Edward  Hopkins'.  However 
much  we  may  see  in  this  Puritan  leader  that  is  remarkable, 
the  fact  remains  that,  in  leading  his  flock  out  of  England, 
Davenport,  as  others  of  his  generation  in  New  England,  set 
up  quite  as  intolerant  a  persecution  in  the  New  World  of 
those  who  would  not  agree  to  his  religious  despotism  as  he 
had  himself  escaped  from  at  home.  I  imagine  that  John 
Davenport's  plans  to  control  and  develop  his  peculiar 
church-state  permitted  no  further  usefulness,  as  a  factor  in 
it,  to  anyone,  regardless  of  position,  who  differed  from  him. 
But  if  Ezekiel  Cheever's  withdrawal  interfered  with  the 
school,  other  and  still  larger  matters  had  an  even  more 
lasting  effect.  Circumstances,  both  within  and  without  the 
Colony,  were  by  1649  rather  suddenly  to  precipitate  a 
situation  out  of  which  the  Colony  itself  was  barely  to  escape 
with  its  life. 

IV 

We  have  seen  how  a  portion  of  the  London  group  in  the 
Eaton  party  had  joined  it  for  business  reasons  quite  apart 
from  the  religious  purposes  of  the  others.  To  the  soaring 
plans  for  a  pure  and  undefiled  Puritan  Utopia  which  John 
Davenport  had  in  mind  for  New  Haven  (and  good  old 
Thomas  More's  book  came  over  with  him,  properly 
enough)  these  Roundhead  London  tradesmen  had  added 
the  supposedly  very  practical  scheme  of  a  New  World  com- 
mercial center.  Built  up  about  the  religious-political  struc- 
ture of  Davenport,  there  was  thus  to  be  founded  a  Puritan 
trading  metropolis,  protecting  the  former  from  financial  dis- 
aster and  incidentally  bringing  in  quite  an  earthly  revenue  of 
its  own  to  the  elect. 


62  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

The  New  Haveners,  hardly  had  they  arrived  at  Quinnip- 
iac,  and  hardly  had  either  church  or  school  been  estab- 
lished, made  their  first  efforts  in  this  alluring  scheme.  The 
historian  Hutchinson  says  that  vessels  were  early  built  here 
for  foreign  voyages,  and  the  town  records  show  the  crazy 
commercial  schemes  which  were  now  to  be  attempted. 
The  end  of  the  Puritan  immigration  to  New  England,  with 
the  New  Haven  parties,  had  resulted  in  few,  if  any,  large 
ships  sailing  into  Quinnipiac  harbor  from  London.  What 
indirect  trade  Eaton's  mariners  therefore  had  with  England 
was  through  the  port  at  Boston,  whither  the  small  home- 
built  New  Haven  shallops,  pinnaces,  and  ketches  now  began 
a  precarious  trade,  carrying  to  Boston  the  beaver  skins  and 
other  furs  of  the  Quinnipiac  woods,  and  bringing  back 
Massachusetts  cattle  and  merchandise  and  English  stuffs 
landed  at  Boston.  Some  small  business  was  also  begun  with 
the  Virginia  farmers,  and,  for  a  while  at  least,  the  New 
Haven  traders  seem  to  have  stopped  at  New  Amsterdam  on 
their  way  home,  and  sold  Virginia  tobacco  to  the  Dutchmen 
there.  A  few  even  more  adventurous  voyages  are  recorded 
In  the  early  colonial  papers.  Several  New  Haven  ships  went 
to  the  Bermudas  and  the  Barbados  In  these  first  few  years, 
and  even  to  the  Azores.  Captain  Lamberton  had  a  trim 
little  vessel  called  the  "Cock,"  the  first  seagoing  vessel 
owned,  If  not  built,  in  New  Haven;  the  town  records  tell 
how,  in  1640,  an  attempt  was  made  by  three  miscreants  to 
steal  It,  and  how  they  got  a  sound  public  whipping  and 
leisure  to  repent  In  the  town  stocks. 

So  I  suppose  that  for  the  first  two  or  three  years,  this 
trading,  while  not  as  promising  In  large  returns  to  the 
Colony  as  had  been  expected,  was  fairly  prosperous. 

But  in  1640  the  first  serious  mistake  was  made.  An  agent 
was  In  that  year  sent  to  the  Delaware  River  to  find  a  suitable 
site  for  a  trading  post,  and  most  of  the  leading  and  wealthy 


The  Davenport  Education  63 

New  Haven  men  formed  "The  Delaware  Company"  and 
took  shares  in  it.  All  might  have  gone  well,  had  it  not  been 
that,  in  the  year  following,  the  New  Haven  Colony  voted 
its  political  jurisdiction  over  the  new  settlement,  and  sent  a 
considerable  body  of  people,  in  Lamberton's  "Cock,"  to  it. 
Anchoring  off  New  Amsterdam,  the  Dutch  Governor  held 
up  the  enterprise  until  the  promise  was  made  of  allegiance 
to  him  in  the  new  territory,  which  was  on  Dutch  soil. 
Matters  naturally  not  turning  out  as  William  the  Testy  had 
desired,  two  Dutch  ships  sailed  from  New  Amsterdam  in 
1642,  successfully  attacked  the  New  Haven  traders,  burned 
down  their  log  cabins,  arrested  the  settlers,  and  confiscated 
the  land. 

The  result  of  this  sudden  disaster  was  the  loss  of  some 
£1,000  to  "The  Delaware  Company,"  as  well  as  the  emer- 
gence of  a  new  danger  in  the  now  aroused  Dutchmen. 

I  take  it  that  this  fiasco,  and  the  threatening  troubles  from 
New  Amsterdam  resulting  from  it,  had  a  good  deal  to  do 
with  what  otherwise  would  appear  to  have  been  a  curious 
political  move  that  the  New  Haven  folk  now  took, — a 
move  which,  unless  it  partly  arose  from  these  circumstances, 
would  appear  to  have  been  a  reversal  of  the  original  plan 
for  complete  disentanglement  from  the  other  New  England 
colonies.  Until  the  year  1643,  the  several  New  England 
colonies  had  existed  as  independent  commonwealths.  The 
first  alarms  of  coming  Indian  wars,  however,  were  now 
sounding  throughout  Massachusetts;  the  Frenchmen  at  the 
north,  with  their  war-painted  Indian  allies,  were  a  possible 
menace,  if  a  remote  one  at  that  time;  and  now  New  Haven 
had  got  into  trouble  with  the  Dutch  on  the  western  frontier. 
The  proposal  resulted,  in  Massachusetts,  of  a  protective 
confederacy  of  the  English  Puritan  Colonies  against  these 
dangers. 


64  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

Facing  the  unexpected  end  of  all  of  their  commercial 
plans  (as  the  Dutch,  at  New  Amsterdam,  could  easily  close 
up  that  end  of  Long  Island  Sound  to  New  Haven  vessels 
sailing  to  Virginia)  the  New  Haven  folk  seem  to  have  been 
,keenly  interested  in  this  proposal.  To  join  such  a  con- 
federacy, however,  the  New  Haven  Colony  and  its  loosely 
connected  outside  plantations  at  Milford,  Guilford,  and 
Stamford,  had  first  to  settle  their  own  political  organization. 
From  this  necessity  the  so-called  "New  Haven  Jurisdiction" 
arose.  This  was  begun  in  April,  1643,  a  month  before  the 
United  Colonies  of  New  England  was  formed  at  Boston,  to 
consist  of  Massachusetts,  Plymouth,  Connecticut,  and  New 
Haven.  It  was  completed  the  following  October,  when 
Milford, — which,  under  the  Rev.  Peter  Prudden,  had  not 
conformed  to  the  church-membership  franchise  restriction 
of  John  Davenport's  New  Haven, — compromised  on  that 
issue,  and  was  admitted.  To  this  "Jurisdiction,"  with  legis- 
lative headquarters  at  New  Haven,  the  towns  of  Southold, 
L.  I.,  and  Branford  were  later  added.  From  then  on  these 
six  towns  formed  a  republic,  and,  as  such,  a  component  part 
of  the  first  union  of  American  commonwealths. 

And  now,  in  1646,  the  newly  formed  New  Haven  Juris- 
diction took  another  step  in  its  relations  to  the  outside 
world,  which  again,  unless  we  understand  its  relation  to  the 
necessities  of  the  case,  would  appear  to  have  been  a  step 
backward  from  the  original  independent  conception  of  its 
founders. 

The  trading  purposes  of  the  voyage  to  England  of  Cap- 
tain Lamberton's  "Crreat  Shippe,"  under  the  auspices  of  a 
new  commercial  company,  "The  Ship  Fellowship,"  were 
important  enough.  It  was  the  first  attempt  at  a  large  trad- 
ing undertaking  of  the  New  Haveners.  It  was  said  that 
nearly  all  of  the  remaining  free  capital  of  Davenport's 
people, — some  five  thousand  pounds, — had  been  invested  in 


66  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

it  as  a  final  effort  to  recoup  the  Colony  fortunes  lost  on  the 
Delaware.  Governor  Eaton,  Captain  Malbon,  Lieutenant 
Governor  Goodyear,  and  Thomas  Gregson, — the  impor- 
tant men  of  the  community, — were  back  of  it.  In  it  sailed, 
to  conduct  the  sale  of  the  hides  and  planks,  the  beaver  furs 
and  the  "corn  and  pease"  consigned  by  the  planters,  seventy 
of  the  best  blood  of  the  Colony, — Goodman  Gregson  and 
Captain  Turner  among  them.  But  "The  Great  Shippe" 
foundered  at  sea. 

This  sufficiently  completed  the  financial  ruin  of  the  once 
promising  and  ambitious  colony  to  make  it  the  most  serious 
event  in  the  first  decade  of  New  Haven's  history.  But,  I 
take  it,  the  errand  upon  which  Gregson  went  in  it  is  even 
more  important.  This  was  no  less  than  that  of  securing 
some  form  of  recognition  of  the  New  Haven  Colony  from 
the  English  government, — very  likely  charter  rights  to  the 
land  and  legalization  of  the  political  organization  which 
was  now  a  part  of  the  New  England  Union,  and  the  only 
part  not  so  equipped,  in  one  form  or  another,  with  colony 
powers  from  England. 

This  was  a  far  cry  from  the  political  high  horse  that 
Theophilus  Eaton  and  John  Davenport  had  ridden  so  gal- 
lantly when  they  formed  their  independent  church-state  at 
Quinnipiac  only  nine  years  before.  Not  only  had  that  inde- 
pendence been  given  up  in  New  Haven's  joining  the  New 
England  confederacy;  the  Colony  was  now  compelled  to 
seek  further  outside  aid  against  impending  trouble  with  the 
Dutch  and  Indians  by  turning  to  England  for  a  charter. 

But  allegiance  to  the  English  Crown  had  become  a  dif- 
ferent matter  in  the  thirteen  years  since  John  Davenport 
had  escaped  from  the  Archbishop  Laud  of  the  early  days  of 
Charles  I.  The  Puritan  movement  in  the  meanwhile  had 
rolled  up  in  a  mighty  wave  over  Strafford  and  Laud  and 
the  King  himself;  the  Long  Parliament  of  1640,  with  the 


The  Davenport  Education  67 

great  Puritan,  Pym,  as  leader  of  the  House  of  Commons, 
had  swept  from  Charles'  court  all  of  the  enemies  of  the 
rights  of  the  people;  Laud  had  been  sent  to  prison;  the 
Army  Plot  had  failed  in  its  plan  to  restore  the  royal  power; 
Strafford  had  been  beheaded;  the  old  Cartwright  principles 
of  Davenport's  early  Coventry  days  had  come  into  wide 
popularity;  the  Bishops  had  been  excluded  from  the  House 
of  Lords,  and  King  Charles  had  left  London  for  Oxford 
(where  his  artillery  trained  in  Davenport's  old  college 
park),  to  muster  a  royal  army  to  quell  the  Roundhead  up- 
rising, and  to  enter  upon  that  civil  war  which,  with  the  rise 
of  Cromwell  as  the  champion  of  the  new  popular  movement, 
had  ended  in  1645  ^^  Naseby  with  the  wreck  of  the  Stuart 
reign  and  the  beginning  of  the  Roundhead  Parliament.  In 
far-off  New  Haven,  it  was  now  possible,  in  1647,  ^or  Gov- 
ernor Eaton  to  announce  that  "The  Kinge's  Armes  are  cutt 
by  Mr.  Mullyner  for  the  towne  and  set  upon  a  post  in  the 
highway  by  the  seaside."  With  the  King  absent,  and  the 
appeal  for  such  a  charter  as  was  now  asked  by  New  Haven 
(and  doubtless  backed  by  the  other  members  of  the  Con- 
federacy) coming  before  more  friendly  officers,  the  reason 
for  this  otherwise  peculiar  act  of  John  Davenport's  people 
may  easily  be  seen.  Cromwell,  a  relative  through  his  wife's 
family  of  William  Hooke,  John  Davenport's  assistant  min- 
ister, might  be  expected  to  see  that  the  appeal  should  come 
before  the  right  officers  and  be  granted.  The  foundering  of 
the  Lamberton  ship,  with  the  New  Haven  messenger  in  this 
effort  aboard,  ended  that  possibility  at  the  same  moment 
that  it  plunged  the  townspeople  into  the  lowest  depths  of 
their  rapidly  ebbing  commercial  fortunes.  No  further  effort 
to  secure  a  legal  title  for  John  Davenport's  colony  was 
ever  made,  with  what  results  we  shall  later  see. 


68  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 


From  this  date  onward,  until  the  first  Puritan  generation 
had  passed  off  the  stage  and  new  times  came,  John  Daven- 
port's colony  seems  to  have  had  a  very  hard  time  of  it. 
By  1650,  it  might  well  have  seemed  that  the  end  had  come. 
It  was  now  but  a  decade  since  they  had  escaped  from  the 
mounting  persecutions  of  a  Laud  to  settle  a  new  Puritan 
commonwealth  on  the  Quinnipiac.  Yet  the  whole  scheme 
for  their  great  Roundhead  trading  emporium  in  the  New 
World  had  fallen  with  a  crash,  at  the  very  moment  when 
their  old  friends  and  neighbors  in  England  had  fought 
through  their  struggle  with  the  Crown  and  English  Church 
and  were  coming  out  of  it  victors.  The  despair  of  the  New 
Haven  folk  was  complete.  They  seem  to  have  looked  about 
elsewhere  for  a  new  settlement,  even  considering  the  possi- 
bility of  recrossing  the  ocean  and  beginning  a  new  Puritan 
home  in  Ireland.  Davenport  had  been  vigorously  urged  by 
his  old  friends  at  home  to  abandon  his  dream-city  and  return 
to  England  and  take  part  in  the  popular  uprising,  but  had 
not  gone.  He  had  been  invited,  in  1643,  to  become  one  of 
the  clergymen  of  the  Westminster  Assembly,  and  had  re- 
fused. The  Protectorate  now  began,  and  Cromwell,  no 
doubt  interested  in  the  New  Haven  Jurisdiction  through 
Hooke,  offered  the  people  a  new  site  in  Jamaica,  which  he 
was  intent  upon  building  up  as  an  Enghsh  bulwark  in  the 
West  Indies.  For  some  reason  or  other,  John  Davenport 
and  his  New  Haven  congregation  did  not  accept  this  offer. 
Possibly  they  were  too  impoverished  to  consider  any  large 
and  new  undertaking;  possibly  the  chief  leaders  were  now 
passing  the  age  when  such  a  thing  was  easy.  They  remained 
to  make  the  best  of  a  bad  bargain  on  the  Quinnipiac.  Only 
Reverend  Hooke  left  the  ruined  Colony  and  went  back  to 
England,  where  he  became  Cromwell's  private  chaplain. 


The  Davenport  Education 


69 


It  was  at  this  low  juncture  that  Ezekiel  Cheever  had  left 
the  settlement,  and  that,  with  no  schoolmaster  in  charge  and 
no  financial  support  likely  from  his  ruined  flock,  John 
Davenport,  turning  his  back  on  the  alluring  offers  from  the 
new  English  government,  began  over  again  to  build  his 
shattered  educational  edifice  and  his  church-state. 


CHAPTER  V 
DAVENPORT'S  NEW  HAVEN  COLLEGE 


I 


P  to  this  time  the  New  Haven  people 
had  been  forced  to  turn  to  Harvard 
for  the  only  higher  education  open  to 
their  sons.  It  had  been  in  a  very 
neighborly  spirit  that  they  had  done 
this,  and  that  they  had  gone  even 
further,  in  contributing  to  the  general 
^-^"'^i  support  of  Harvard.  A  town  order 
of  1644,  passed  but  five  years  after  New  Haven  had  been 
settled,  had  established  annual  voluntary  gifts  in  the  country 
pay  of  the  times  for  this  purpose.  These  gifts, — called 
"the  College  corn," — had  been  asked  of  everyone  "whose 
heart  is  willing  thereunto,  a  peck  of  wheat  or  the  value  of 
It"  to  be  used  "for  the  relief  of  poor  scholars  at  the  college 
at  Cambridge."  Collectors  were  appointed  to  receive  these 
gifts,  which  amounted  to  forty  bushels  of  wheat  in  the  first 
year  after  the  order  had  been  passed.  Three  years  later, 
however,   the   New  Haven   public  interest   fell   off   in   the 


Davenport's  New  Haven  College  71 

matter.  The  purpose  of  the  Harvard  support  had  been  "that 
children  being  fit  for  learning,  but  their  parents  not  able  to 
beare  the  whole  charge,  might  the  better  be  trayned  upp  for 
publique  service."  In  1647,  however,  Governor  Eaton  had 
to  urge  this  collection  upon  his  people,  "considering  the 
worke  is  a  service  to  Christ,  to  bring  up  yonge  plants  for  his 
service,  and  besides,  it  wilbe  a  reproach  that  it  shalbe  said 
Newhaven  is  falne  off  from  this  service."  Three  such  ad- 
monitions had  to  be  given  by  the  Governor.  But  public 
interest  had  subsided.  With  Ezekiel  Cheever's  departure 
this  finally  died  out  altogether.^ 

In  the  meanwhile  John  Davenport  had  begun  a  public 
movement  for  a  college  of  his  own. 

It  is  worth  retelling  this  well-known  story  of  John  Daven- 
port's efforts  thus  to  found  a  second  Harvard  in  New 
Haven,  inasmuch  as,  had  they  succeeded,  Yale  College, 
under  quite  a  different  name,  would  have  been  established 
before  1650  in  New  Haven,  instead  of  under  very  different 
conditions  some  fifty  odd  years  later,  and  elsewhere. 

A  start  had  been  made  toward  this  end  as  early  as  1641, 
when  the  town  school  had  been  set  up.  In  the  original  lay- 
out of  the  village,  John  Brockett  had  marked  off  some  forty 
or  more  acres  between  the  modern  Olive  Street  and  the 
harbor  shore,  which  was  called,  from  the  Indian  midden- 
heaps  found  there,  "the  Oystershell-fields."  The  rent  of 
these  fields  to  various  townspeople  for  farming  purposes 

1  The  purpose  of  this  was  "for  the  reliefe  of  poore  schollars  att  the 
colledge  att  Cambridge."  A  Reverend  Shepherd  of  the  Cambridge  church 
was  a  Bay  delegate  to  the  meeting  of  the  United  Colonies  at  Hartford  in 
1644,  and  appears  to  have  suggested  this  assistance.  Both  Connecticut  and 
New  Haven  undertook  to  give  it.  The  New  Haven  boys  at  Harvard  were 
from  the  wealthier  families  and  received  no  public  help  to  go  there.  The 
"College  corn"  was  a  general  contribution  to  help  support  poor  boys  from 
other  colonies.  The  scheme  did  not  succeed,  largely  because  of  the  poverty 
of  the  western  colonies.  Joshua  Atwater,  Anthony  Thompson,  Corporal 
Bell,  Roger  Ailing  and  others  were  among  the  New  Haven  collectors. 


72  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

was  ordered  to  be  used,  later  on  and  when  the  occasion 
arose,  to  support  a  "college."  So  that  this  "college"  ap- 
pears to  have  been  one  of  the  original  projects  of  John 
Davenport.^  It  was  now  proposed,  in  1647,  ^^  proceed  with 
the  plan. 

It  had  been  in  January,  1646,  that  the  New  Haven  folk 
had  followed  their  ill-fated  vessel  out  on  the  harbor  ice, 
through  which  they  had  sawed  a  channel  for  it  to  the  open 
Sound,  and  had  there  prayed  a  fervent  God-speed  for  it 
with  their  minister.  Returning  within  the  year,  as  they 
anticipated,  with  a  Colony  charter  and  increased  fortunes 
for  the  townsfolk,  the  Lamberton  venture  was  to  bring 
about  the  long-delayed  prosperity  of  which  they  had 
dreamed  in  their  London  counting-rooms.  Awaiting  that 
day  in  high  hopes,  John  Davenport  now  proposed  to  start 
the  "college,"  the  second  step  which  was  to  give  New 
Haven  the  educational  advantages  of  the  older  Boston. 

And  so,  the  old  town  records  tell  us,  the  town-lot  com- 
mittee was  requested  to  "consider  and  reserve  what  lot  they 
shall  see  neat  and  commodious  for  a  college,  which  they 
desire  may  be  set  up  as  soon  as  their  ability  will  reach  unto." 
Three  acres  on  what  is  now  Elm  Street,  facing  the  Market- 
place, was  chosen  for  this  purpose  by  the  town-lot  commit- 
tee. This  was  land  that  had  been  originally  allotted  to  a 
Mrs.  Eldred,  who  for  some  reason  or  other  had  not  joined 
the  Eaton  party  as  she  had  planned,  and  whose  allotment 

1  Hutchinson  says  of  New  Haven's  early  college  ambitions:  "They  made 
many  attempts  all  along,  from  the  first  to  the  last  of  their  being  a  distinct 
colony,  even  such  as  were  above  their  strength  to  promote  learning  by 
public  schools.  Yea,  it  was  in  their  hearts  to  set  up  a  college  and  there 
were  sundry  provisions  made  and  some  land  laid  up  in  order  thereto,  in 
which  desires,  though  they  in  issue  failed,  yet  there  is  an  honorable  testi- 
mony of  their  good  will  to  learning  and  liberal  education  of  youth  and 
may  have  its  acceptance,  in  proportion  with  David  desiring  to  build  a 
temple,  though  it  was  effected  by  his  son." 


Davenport's  New  Haven  College 


73 


was  therefore  now  at  public  disposal.  It  was  about  where 
Elm  Street  now  crosses  Temple,  and  thus  opposite  Ezekiel 
Cheever's  schoolhouse,  and  practically  in  the  center  of  the 
village. 

But  nothing  came  of  this  public  action.  It  was  early  in 
1647  that  this  step  had  been  taken.  By  the  end  of  that 
year  the  New  Haven  people  had  given  up  all  hope  of  the 
return  of  the  Lamberton  expedition,  and  had  sorrowfully 
settled  the  estates  of  the  settlers  who  had  been  lost  in  it. 
The  financial  loss  thus  sustained  seems  to  have  settled  the 
"college"  project  for  the  time  being.  It  was  to  recoup  this 
loss  by  a  third  commercial  venture,  that  another  expedition 
was  now  sent  to  the  Delaware.     This  was  even  less  sue- 


74  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

cessful  than  the  first.  The  waiting  Dutchmen  peremptorily 
arrested  all  the  party  and  sent  them  ignominiously  packing 
back  to  New  Haven,  followed  down  the  Sound  by  explosive 
threats  of  what  would  happen  if  a  New  England  Puritan 
party  ever  tried  again  to  settle  on  Dutch  soil.  This  was  the 
end  of  New  Haven's  repeated  efforts  to  establish  itself  as 
a  commercial  metropolis.  Three  years  later,  to  be  sure, 
there  was  a  sudden  renewal  of  the  Delaware  enthusiasm,  and 
New  Haven  even  sent  messengers  to  Massachusetts  to 
recruit  settlers  for  a  final  attempt  to  force  the  Dutch.  But 
the  scheme  did  not  materialize. 

II 

But  five  years  later  John  Davenport  again  boldly  brought 
forward  his  college  project.  This  renewed  agitation  ap- 
pears to  have  been  of  a  most  determined  character,  sur- 
prisingly so  when  we  consider  the  low  ebb  of  the  Colony's 
finances  at  this  period.  It  may  well  have  been  that  this  very 
poverty  operated  to  make  the  cost  prohibitive  to  individuals 
who  wished  to  send  their  sons  to  Harvard.  But  another 
reason  had  an  even  larger  share  in  the  matter.  In  a  town 
vote  shortly  to  be  passed,  the  New  Haven  magistrates  set 
down  that  "in  some  respects  this  seemes  to  be  a  season  of 
some  disturbances  being  at  present  at  the  colledg  in  ye  Bay 
concerning  the  dismission  of  President  Dunster."  It  is 
interesting  to  find  this  reason  given  in  connection  with 
Davenport's  efforts  to  found  a  New  Haven  college.  A 
Harvard  situation,  as  we  shall  see,  was  again  to  have  its 
large  part  in  Yale's  beginnings.  President  Dunster  had 
been  having  a  hard  time  of  it  at  the  infant  Harvard,  of 
which  he  had  been  the  first  president.  He  had  just  peti- 
tioned the  Commissioners  to  the  seminary  that  the  original 
building  was  in  poor  condition,  that  the  library  was  defective 
in  law,   philosophy,   and  some  other  things,   and  that  his 


Davenport's  New  Haven  College  75 

own  salary  was  paid  out  of  "stipends  from  the  scholars"  and 
not  too  punctually  paid  at  that.  But  President  Dunster  had 
himself  fallen  from  grace;  good  Puritan  that  he  was,  he 
had  come  to  disbelieve  in  infant  baptism,  and  had  neglected 
to  present  one  of  his  own  children  for  the  traditional  rite. 
The  Massachusetts  Puritan  doctrines  rested  so  firmly  on 
the  universal  acceptance  of  infant  baptism  as  the  only  means 
to  salvation  and  upbringing  in  the  orthodox  path  of  the 
fathers,  that  Dunster's  action,  however  valuable  he  himself 
had  been  to  Harvard,  could  have  had  but  the  one  result  of 
his  dismissal. 

I  imagine  that  the  rising  disturbance  at  Harvard  over  this 
event  (which  took  place  in  1654)  had  its  considerable  effect 
on  the  minds  of  the  New  Haven  leaders  in  the  three  or  four 
years  just  before  it.  Davenport,  some  fourteen  years  Dun- 
ster's senior  at  Magdalen  College,  Oxford,  had  little  liking 
for  the  theological  training  that  his  New  Haven  boys  might 
receive  under  so  prominent  an  opponent  of  one  of  his 
fundamental  church  rules.  However  that  may  be,  the  open- 
ing act  of  1647  i^  Davenport's  efforts  to  found  a  New 
Haven  college  was  followed,  five  years  later,  by  a  general 
agitation  of  it  throughout  the  plantations  of  the  New  Haven 
Jurisdiction.  In  the  town  records  of  Guilford,  in  this  later 
year,  we  find  an  entry  concerning  the  matter.^  The  Guil- 
ford people  were  ready  to  do  their  share  toward  establish- 
ing such  a  "New  Haven  Colledge,"  providing  so  powerful 
a  neighbor  as  the  Connecticut  Colony  "do  joyne," — a  propo- 
sition of  which  we  hear  nothing,  so  far  as  I  can  discover, 

1  "The  matter  about  a  Colledge  at  New  Haven  was  thought  to  be  too 
great  a  charge  for  us  of  this  jurisdiction  to  undergoe  alone;  especially 
considering  the  unsettled  state  of  New  Haven  Towne,  being  publiquely 
declared  from  the  deliberate  judgment  of  the  most  understanding  men  to 
be  a  place  of  no  comfortable  subsistence  for  ye  present  inhabitants  there." 
The  Guilford  people,  however,  "desire  thanks  to  Mr.  Goodyear  for  his 
proffer  to  the  setting  forward  of  such  a  work." 


76  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

from  any  other  source.  But  the  New  Haven  people  were 
pressing,  and  several  of  their  leaders  enlisted  themselves  in 
the  plan.  Stephen  Goodyear,  second  to  Theophllus  Eaton 
in  public  standing  among  the  laymen  of  the  little  stockaded 
village,  was  one  of  these.  While  the  town  records  of  the 
next  year  are  lost,  we  find  in  a  later  remark  of  John  Daven- 
port's that  Stephen  Goodyear,  then  Deputy  Governor,  had 
offered  his  house  and  lot  on  Chapel  Street  (about  where  the 
Taft  Hotel  now  stands)  for  the  president's  house.  Nothing 
appears  to  have  come  either  from  the  Goodyear  offer,  or  of 
Guilford's  proposal  that  Connecticut  join  In  the  college  plan. 
Two  years  later,  however,  the  college  scheme  was  again 
advanced  by  the  energetic  Davenport.^  The  New  Haven 
planters  were  agreed  In  favor  of  the  project  of  educating 
their  sons  at  home,  but,  their  commercial  dreams  finally 
stripped  of  all  fancies,  now  wanted  to  be  assured  of  the 
financial  side  of  it.^  They  very  practically  wanted  to  know 
how  much  would  be  subscribed.  In  1655,  therefore,  the 
General  Court  cast  up  accounts  and  discovered  that  New 
Haven  was  prepared  to  give  some  £300  In  cash  In  addition 
to  Its  two  lots  of  land  already  appropriated,  that  Mllford 

1  In  May,  1654,  the  town  "was  informed  that  there  is  some  motion  again 
on  foote  concerning  the  setting  up  of  a  Colledg  here  at  Newhaven,  wch,  if 
attayned,  will  in  all  likelyhood  prove  verey  benificiall  to  this  place,  but 
now  it  is  onely  ppounded  to  knowe  the  townes  minde  and  whether  they  are 
willing  to  further  the  worke  by  bearing  a  meet  pportion  of  charge  if  the 
jurisdiction,  upon  the  pposall  thereof,  shall  see  cause  to  cary  it  on.  No 
man  objected,  but  all  seemed  willing,  pvided  that  the  paye  wch  they  can 
raise  here  will  doe  it." 

2  May,  1655,  the  town  records  have  it  that  "it  is  now  intended  to  be 
ppounded  to  the  gen:  court;  therefore  this  towne  may  declare  what  they 
will  doe  by  way  of  incouragmt  for  ye  same,  and  it  would  be  well  if  they 
herein  giue  a  good  example  to  ye  other  townes  in  ye  jurisdiction,  being  free 
in  so  good  a  worke.  Mr.  Davenport  and  Mr.  Hooke  were  both  present 
upon  this  occasion,  and  spake  much  to  incourag  the  worke."  A  committee 
was  thereupon  appointed  "to  goe  to  the  seuerall  planters  in  this  towne  and 
take  from  them  what  they  will  freely  giue  to  this  worke." 


Davenport's  New  Haven  College  j^ 

was  ready  to  advance  £ioo,  but  that  the  other  towns  wanted 
more  time  to  look  into  the  matter.  New  Haven  now  asked 
the  General  Court  to  bring  the  affair  to  a  conclusion,  and 
so  collectors  were  sent  around  among  the  smaller  towns  of 
the  Colony  to  raise  the  local  contributions  to  the  amount 
desired.  It  is  probable  that  they  had  little  success  in  this 
effort,  if  indeed  they  made  it  with  very  great  enterprise. 
But  £240  more  was  raised  in  this  canvass.  But  the  £640 
thus  promised  seems  to  have  been  sufficient  to  make  a  begin- 
ning at  the  long-talked-of  project,  and  a  request  was  made 
for  but  £60  a  year  more,  to  be  used  to  pay  the  "president." 
This  whole  proceeding,  in  the  light  of  local  conditions  in 
New  Haven  in  1655,  was  a  bold  one.  The  "college"  ap- 
peared to  be  now  a  certainty,  in  spite  of  the  financial  depres- 
sion that  still  hung  over  the  Colony.  The  New  Haven 
General  Court  would  seem  to  have  understood  the  matter 
as  concluded.  So  far  as  it  was  concerned,  a  "New  Haven 
College"  had  been  established  "for  the  education  of  youth 
in  good  literature"  and  "to  fit  them  for  public  service  in 
church  and  commonwealth,"  quite  as  surely  as  the  Massa- 
chusetts General  Court,  in  1636, — the  much  bewigged  Sir 
Harry  Vane  presiding  in  his  courtly  robes, — had  established 
what  had  since  become  Harvard  College.  John  Davenport 
so  looked  upon  it,  and,  awaiting  its  successful  beginning, 
renewed  his  efforts  to  maintain  the  grammar  school  which 
was  to  prepare  his  town  youths  for  it.  But  nothing  appears 
to  have  happened,  the  outside  towns  being  but  little  inter- 
ested and  New  Haven  being  financially  unable  to  carry  out 
the  project  alone. 

Ill 

In  spite  of  all  the  great  plans  for  it,  during  these  few 
years  the  town  school  had  practically  dropped  out  of  sight. 
The  small  children,  both  boys  and  girls,  were  still  required 


78 


The  Beginnings  of  Yale 


f  S/homas  QregsorCs  Corner  of  the  S^rfe  f-ffface\ 


to  learn  their  letters  and  to  write,  at  home,  and  impov- 
erished females  were  encouraged  to  set  up  "Dame  schools" 
for  this  purpose.  The  few  boys  whose  fathers  could  afford 
it  continued  to  go  to  the  town  school,  and  there  to  proceed 
into  Latin.  But  the  first  flush  of  enthusiasm  for  this 
important  part  of  John  Davenport's  church-state  scheme 
now  appears  to  have  faded  away.  After  one  unsuccessful 
attempt  to  fill  Ezekiel  Cheever's  place  in  the  little  log- 
cabin  schoolhouse  on  the  Market-place,  the  Rev.  John 
Bowers  had  become  the  schoolmaster.  This  Bowers  was  a 
young  Harvard  graduate,  a  native  of  Cambridge,  and  the 
classmate  of  two  later  Presidents  of  Harvard — John  Rogers 
and  that  Urian  Oakes  whose  philanthropic  later  life,  to 
quote  Cotton  Mather,  "  'twas  like  a  Silkworm,  he  spent  his 
own  Bowels  or  Spirits,  to  procure  the  Garments  of  Right- 


Davenport's  New  Haven  College  79 

eousness  for  his  Hearers."  But  the  youthful  Bowers  had 
at  once  found  himself  in  difficulties,  both  educational  and 
financial.  His  boys  were  sent  to  him  as  unprepared  as  ever 
in  their  English  reading  and  grammar,  and  unable  "to 
understand  the  main  grounds  and  principles  of  Christian 
Religion  necessary  to  Salvation," — an  interesting  suggestion 
of  the  troubles  that  John  Davenport  was  having  in  his  own 
pulpit.  Nor  could  Bowers  collect  tuition.  The  famous 
New  Haven  School  code  of  1656  was  very  likely  drawn  up 
by  Davenport  and  Bowers  to  meet  these  difficulties.  Six 
years  previously,  a  compulsory  school  law  had  been  framed 
to  meet  a  similar  situation  in  Thomas  Hooker's  Connecticut 
Colony,  no  doubt  as  a  result  of  the  educational  interest 
begun  there  by  young  John  Alcock.  This  young  Harvard 
graduate,  three  years  Bowers'  senior  and  the  nephew  of 
Thomas  Hooker,  had  been  so  successful  in  his  efforts  in 
the  Hartford  school  that,  in  1649,  supported  by  this  law, 
he  had  sent  four  Connecticut  Colony  boys  to  Harvard,  the 
first  thus  to  go  in  the  thirteen  years  of  that  Colony's  history. 
New  Haven  was  now  forced  to  enact  a  similar  law. 

Curious  it  is  to  realize  that,  before  1650,  so  soon  after 
the  promising  founding  of  these  two  idealistic  Puritan 
commonwealths  and  in  spite  of  their  basic  differences  in 
political  and  church  organization,  both  Connecticut  and 
New  Haven  were  facing  disaster  in  their  educational 
schemes.  Yet  a  similar  difficulty  had  been  the  experience  of 
the  Massachusetts  towns.  Doubtless  it  had  been  expected 
that  the  religious  zeal  of  the  settlers  would  insure  the  volun- 
tary education  of  the  rising  generation.  But,  sad  to  relate, 
this  had  not  been  the  case.  Quite  the  opposite  is  true  of  the 
commonly  accepted  tradition  that  these  first  Puritan  New 
England  schools  were  successes.  The  "one  chief  project  of 
that  old  deluder,  Sathan,"  had  always  been  to  keep  men 
from  the  knowledge  of  the  Scriptures.    The  old  deluder  had 


8o  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

been  working  in  Massachusetts,  as  well  as  in  Hooker's  and 
Davenport's  Utopias,  with  a  vengeance.  Compulsory  edu- 
cational laws  were  everywhere  required.  The  acts  that  the 
Connecticut  and  New  Haven  ministers  and  their  magistrates 
now  found  necessary  were  passed  by  their  respective  General 
Courts,  "that  Learning  may  not  be  buried  in  the  Grave  of 
our  Forefathers  in  Church  and  Commonwealth,  the  Lord 
assisting  our  endeavors."  The  Connecticut  Colony  school 
law  commanded  that  each  town  should  see  that  there  was 
no  "Barbarism"  allowed  any  longer  "in  any  of  their  fam- 
ilies, at  a  penalty  of  twenty  shillings  for  neglect."  The 
New  Haven  code,  now  following,  was  quite  as  strict.  All 
the  "Children  and  Apprentices"  were  to  be  taught  "to  read 
the  Scriptures,  and  other  good  and  profitable  printed  books 
in  the  English  tongue,  and  in  some  competent  measure  to 
understand  the  main  grounds  and  principles  of  Christian 
Religion."  The  New  Haven  Court  followed  this  with  a 
general  order  that  every  plantation  in  the  Jurisdiction 
should  "set  up  and  maintayne"  a  school  and  pay  a  third  of 
the  schoolmaster's  salary.  To  help  matters  along,  the  New 
Haven  General  Court  three  years  later  freed  from  payment 
of  personal  taxes  all  those  who  studied  diligently;  if  they 
ceased  doing  this,  the  rates  were  imposed  again. 

But,  so  low  were  New  Haven's  financial  affairs,  even 
these  paternal  legislative  acts  had  little  influence  upon  the 
rebirth  of  the  town  Free  School.  Master  Bowers,  in  1660, 
finally  had  to  appear  before  the  Court  about  it.  If  the  town 
wanted  a  school,  said  he,  and  him  for  the  schoolmaster,  the 
proper  thing  was  to  show  that  they  did,  and  do  something 
beyond  passing  laws  which  evidently  were  given  small  atten- 
tion by  the  townspeople. 

We  may  imagine  the  perplexities  of  the  town  fathers  as 
they  received  this  upstanding  communication  from  their 
young  Harvard  schoolmaster.     Doubtless  there  were  many 


Davenport's  New  Haven  College  8i 

wagglngs  of  heads  under  the  broad-brimmed  hats  of  the  day 
and  pullings  of  noses  and  dubious  suggestions  of  the  state  of 
the  Colony  and  the  disproportionate  cost  of  the  higher 
education  for  so  poor  and  long-suffering  a  settlement  of  dis- 
appointed tradesmen.  But  the  other  plantations  of  the 
Jurisdiction  were  having  similar  difficulties  in  supporting 
their  enforced  Free  Schools.  The  question  had  become  a 
broader  one  than  New  Haven's  school  troubles  alone. 
Whoever  made  the  suggestion,  we  do  not  know  (very  likely 
it  was  Davenport),  but  the  Court  decided  to  meet  the  situa- 
tion by  turning  the  New  Haven  Free  School  into  a  Colony 
Grammar  School  and  to  admit  boys  who  wished  to  "make 
Latin"  from  all  of  the  six  towns  in  the  Jurisdiction  to  it. 
The  businesslike  John  Bowers  resigned  at  this  point,  going 
first  to  Guilford  and  then  to  Branford,  where  he  was  later 
to  succeed  the  elder  Abraham  Pierson^  in  the  village  church. 
The  Colony  School,  successor  to  that  pioneer  town  school 
on  the  public  Market-place,  now  promised,  as  did  the  sleep- 
ing college  project,  the  first  fruits  of  John  Davenport's  two 
long  decades  of  struggle  to  found  a  well-rounded  educa- 
tional plan  for  his  New  Haven  church. 

IV 

And  we  may  suppose  that  the  old  Puritan  leader  (for 
John  Davenport  was  now  sixty-one  years  old)  now  felt  that 
there  was  but  one  more  stumbling-block  in  the  path  of  his 
cherished  plans.  This,  as  was  the  case  generally  throughout 
New  England  in  educational  matters,  was  financial.  The 
New  Haven  college  needed  money  from  without  the  Colony 
if  it  were  to  succeed.     And  so  we  find  John  Davenport 

1  Abraham  Pierson  the  younger,  now  just  graduating  from  Harvard 
College  and  later  to  appear  at  the  forefront  of  the  personages  in  these 
pages,  had  come  to  New  Haven  from  his  father's  Branford  home  during 
these  years  of  John  Bowers'  teaching,  and  had  been  prepared  by  him  for 
Harvard. 


82  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

writing  a  letter  In  the  book-lined  study  of  his  spacious  house 
overlooking  the  harbor,  to  his  old  friend  Edward  Hopkins, 
and  enclosing  with  it,  no  doubt,  a  supporting  word  from 
Governor  Eaton  over  the  way,  step-father  to  Edward  Hop- 
kins' wife,  who  had  been  a  Yale,  and  his  chief  on  the 
original  emigration. 

Edward  Hopkins,  whom  we  left  at  the  settlement  of  New 
Haven  removing  to  Thomas  Hooker's  Connecticut  Colony, 
had  led  an  eventful  life  there  until  1653,  when  he  had  re- 
turned to  England  upon  the  death  of  his  brother,  warden 
of  the  fleet  under  Oliver  Cromwell.  In  Connecticut,  Hop- 
kins had  been  a  useful  planter,  occupying  the  Governor's 
chair  for  seven  annual  terms  and  acting  in  large  Colony 
matters  as  one  of  Its  first  citizens.  He  had  been  the  chair- 
man of  the  Connecticut  Commission  that  had  treated  with 
George  Fenwick,  In  1644,  for  the  absorption  of  Saybrook, 
its  fort  and  Its  "two  demlculvering  cast  pieces,  with  all  the 
shot  thereunto  appertaining,  one  murderer  with  two  cham- 
bers, two  barrels  of  gunpowder,  bandoleers  and  rests,"  etc., 
"and  all  the  housing  within  the  palllsado."  Three  years 
later  he  had  headed  a  second  commission,  with  Captain 
John  Culick  and  others,  to  rearrange  the  money  terms  of 
this  transfer.  He  had  several  times  represented  Connecti- 
cut in  the  meetings  of  the  New  England  Union.  During  the 
Dutch  and  Indian  troubles  he  had  been  an  energetic  leader 
in  the  Colony's  defense,  and,  when  he  had  returned  to 
England,  was  the  spokesman  for  the  Connecticut  agent  who 
had  been  sent  to  Lord  Cromwell,  Parliament,  and  General 
Monk,  to  secure  English  military  aid  against  the  New  York 
Dutch.  He  had.  It  was  said  of  him,  "conducted  the  affairs 
of  government  with  great  wisdom  and  integrity,  and  was 
universally  beloved."  He  seems  to  have  been  looked  upon 
by  his  contemporaries  as  the  Theophilus  Eaton  of  Connecti- 
cut.    His  charities  were  "great  and  extensive;  besides  the 


Davenport's  New  Haven  College  83 

relief  he  dispensed  to  the  poor  [I  am  quoting  from  Ben- 
jamin Trumbull]  he  gave  considerable  sums  of  money  to 
others,  to  be  disposed  of  to  charitable  purposes."  Unlike 
his  former  colleagues  in  the  New  Haven  Colony,  Edward 
Hopkins  had  added  to  rather  than  lost  his  original  fortune, 
and  had  gone  back  to  England  a  comfortably-wealthy 
American  colonist.  Though  he  had  expected  to  return,  and, 
in  1654  had  been  reelected  Governor  of  Connecticut  in  that 
expectation,  his  reception  by  Cromwell  had  been  so  hearty 
that  he  had  remained  there,  at  first  succeeding  his  brother  as 
First  Warden  of  the  English  Fleet,  then  as  Commissioner 
of  the  Admiralty  and  Navy,  and  finally  becoming  a  member 
of  the  Second  Protectorate  Parliament. 

It  had  been  in  either  1656  or  1657  that  John  Davenport 
had  written  to  Hopkins  outlining  the  facts  regarding  the 
New  Haven  college  project.  Afterward  restating  these  in 
a  public  statement  he  said  ''that,  sundry  years  past,  it  was 
concluded  by  the  said  General  Court,  that  a  small  college, 
such  as  the  day  of  small  things  will  permit,  should  be  settled 
in  New  Haven,  for  the  education  of  youth  in  good  litera- 
ture, to  fit  them  for  public  service,  in  church  and  common- 
wealth, as  it  will  appear  from  the  public  records."  He 
asked  Hopkins  for  a  money  contribution  to  it.^  The  latter's 
reply  was  as  follows:  "Most  Dear  Sir,  The  long  continued 
respects  I  have  received  from  you,  but  especially,  the  speak- 
ings of  the  Lord  to  my  heart,  by  you,  have  put  me  under 
deep  obligations  to  love  and  a  return  to  thanks  beyond  what 
I  have  or  can  express."  He  then  added  what  Davenport 
wanted:  "That  which  the  Lord  hath  given  me  in  those  parts, 
I  ever  designed,  the  greatest  part  of  it  for  the  furtherance  of 

1  In  the  light  of  the  gift  by  Elihu  Yale,  some  fifty-six  years  later,  it  is 
worth  noting  how  in  1657  his  aunt's  wealthy  husband  was  at  the  point  of 
forestalling  him  in  a  first  considerable  endowment  to  the  New  Haven 
"college"  which  might  have  resulted  in  a  Hopkins  College  instead  of  Yale. 


84  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

the  work  of  Christ  in  those  ends  of  the  earth,  and  if  I  under- 
stand that  a  college  is  begun  and  like  to  be  carried  on,  at 
New  Haven,  for  the  good  of  posterity,  I  shall  give  some 
encouragement  thereunto." 

But  Fate  would  have  it  otherwise.  And  it  was  in  such 
an  incident  as  this  that  we  may  read  clearly  the  natural 
penalties  that  were  inherent  from  the  beginning  in  the  great 
Davenport  social  scheme.  For  had  Edward  Hopkins 
chosen  to  remain  with  the  New  Haven  colonists  in  1638  he 
would  at  this  moment  have  made  his  gift  to  the  Davenport 
Colony  college.  That  he  had  chosen,  instead,  to  join  the 
more  liberal  Connecticut  people  could  hardly  have  been  for 
other  cause  than  that  he  preferred  their  religious  and  politi- 
cal system  to  the  narrow  theocracy  of  New  Haven.  And 
so,  where  we  cannot  but  believe  that  John  Davenport's 
political  ideas  had  driven  Edward  Hopkins  to  Connecticut 
in  the  first  place,  we  now  may  see  where,  from  that  incident, 
and  others  like  it,  was  to  result  that  chain  of  events  which 
in  the  end  was  to  be  the  undoing  of  the  Davenport  scheme 
of  things. 

For  Hopkins,  when  his  sudden  death  occurred  a  year 
after  he  had  thus  agreed  to  give  substantially  to  the  New 
Haven  college,  did  not  do  it,  but,  instead,  left  a  will  dividing 
the  money  that  Davenport  had  asked  for,  between  New 
Haven  and  his  own  old  Colony  of  Connecticut. 

From  this  act  a  long  train  of  results  was  to  follow.  The 
estate,  which  consisted  of  Connecticut  property  in  large 
measure,  both  real  and  personal,  came  to  £1,324  "and  a 
negar,"  and  Hopkins  named  as  cotrustees  for  its  collection 
and  distribution  his  two  old  New  Haven  friends  of  the 
early  London  days, — Davenport  and  Eaton, — and  two 
Connecticut  men,  that  Captain  Culick  who  had  served  with 
him  on  various  Connecticut  commissions,  and  William 
Goodwin.     Had  this  large  estate  been  left  to  John  Daven- 


Daverfport's  New  Haven  College  85 

port's  Colony  alone,  the  proposed  New  Haven  college 
would  have  been  established  by  1660  at  New  Haven. 

Not  only,  moreover,  was  the  Hopkins  bequest  made  to 
the  two  colonies,  but  under  the  terms  of  the  will  it  was  to 
be  used  for  "both  grammar  school  and  college."  So  that, 
even  if  the  New  Haven  share  of  the  estate  had  come  at 
once,  it  would  not  all  have  been  at  the  disposition  of  the 
projected  higher  institution.  But  even  that  was  not  to  be. 
Governor  Eaton  had  died  before  he  could  act  under  the 
will,  and  John  Davenport  met  the  Connecticut  trustees  and 
agreed  (as  we  may  read  in  his  elaborate  statement  of  the 
case  to  the  New  Haven  General  Court  in  1660)  to  divide 
the  legacy  equally  between  the  two  colonies,  after  £100  had 
been  given  to  Harvard.^ 

Yet,  in  spite  of  these  unexpected  reverses,  John  Daven- 
port might  well  have  anticipated,  in  1660,  that  half  of  the 
Hopkins  gift  was  now  to  come,  and  that,  even  if  part  of  it 
would  have  to  go  to  the  grammar  school,  the  remainder, 
with  what  had  been  promised  in  the  Jurisdiction,  would  be 
sufficient  to  begin  his  long-cherished  college  plan.  This 
would  very  likely  have  been  the  fact,  had  not  circumstances 
now  come  about  which  were  to  throw  the  whole  college 
project  to  the  four  winds  and  end  in  an  entirely  unexpected 
way  for  John  Davenport's  church-state  itself. 

1  In  1659  the  Hartford  church  was  split  into  two  warring  factions  over 
matters  of  church  organization,  and  the  dissatisfied  faction,  led  by  Mr. 
Goodwin,  the  Hopkins  trustee,  had  moved  to  Hadley.  When  the  final 
settlement  of  the  Hopkins  estate  was  made,  therefore,  one  half  of  the 
Connecticut  share  went  with  Mr.  Goodwin  to  Hadley,  where  a  Hopkins 
Grammar  School  has  continued  to  this  day  on  the  foundation. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  DOWNFALL  OF  THE  NEW  HAVEN 
REPUBLIC 


I 


T  had  been  In  1660  that  John  Daven- 
port, acting  as  the  surviving  New 
Haven  trustee  of  the  Hopkins  bequest, 
had  turned  over  to  the  General  Court 
of  the  New  Haven  Jurisdiction  all  the 
papers  concerning  the  trust,  and  his 
own  proposals  concerning  its  use. 
The  success  of  the  New  Haven  Col- 
lege plan  was  now  assured,  in  popular  fame.  Davenport 
ordered  that  the  town  should  accumulate  from  then  on  the 
rents  of  the  old  "Oystershell-fields"  that  had  been  set  aside 
for  the  purpose  in  1641,  till  they  should  be  needed  when 
"the  college"  should  be  set  up.  "Mrs.  Eldred's  lot"  on  Elm 
Street  was  ordered  to  be  used  for  the  site  both  of  the  coming 
college  and  the  grammar  school  which  the  Hopkins  money 
was  to  bolster  up.     And  the  townspeople  were  again  com- 


Downfall  of  the  New  Haven  Republic        87 

manded  to  keep  their  sons  "constantly  to  learning"  against  ' 
the  time  when  the  new  college  should  "train  up"  the  youth 
for  "public  serviceableness."  According  to  these  Instruc- 
tions the  Colony  Itself  was  to  settle  £40  annually  for  "a 
common  school,"  and  add  £100  for  a  schoolhouse  and  a 
"library";  the  original  £40  a  year  to  be  paid  by  the  other 
towns  for  a  Colony  grammar  school  was  now  to  be  settled 
upon  some  town,  presumably  New  Haven,  and  a  school- 
master engaged  to  teach  the  Latin,  Greek,  and  Hebrew 
tongues.  In  relinquishing  this  trust  Davenport  ordered  that 
a  committee  of  church  members  should  be  chosen  to  consult 
"In  emergent  difficult  cases  that  may  concern  the  school  or 
college,"  over  the  acts  of  which  he  desired  a  veto  power  for 
himself.  To  keep  the  trust  papers,  a  "convenient  chest  with 
two  locks  and  keys"  was  to  be  kept  In  the  house  of  the 
Governor  of  the  Colony  (at  that  time  William  Leete  of 
Guilford)  "till  a  more  public  place  (as  a  library  or  the  like) 
may  be  prepared." 

These  various  orders  of  John  Davenport  undoubtedly 
were  Intended  to  establish  at  once  a  grammar  school,  the 
"College,"  though  still  In  view,  to  be  postponed  until  the 
time  was  ripe  for  It,  which  of  course  was  to  be  at  once. 
The  famous  New  Haven  Hopkins  Grammar  School  dates 
from  this  public  action  by  John  Davenport.  For  we  find 
the  Governor,  Deputy  Governor,  one  freeman,  and  the  two 
ministers  of  the  New  Haven  church,  meeting  on  June  28, 
1660,  and  deciding  to  engage  the  Rev.  Jeremiah  Peck,  then 
the  schoolmaster  at  Guilford,  to  come  to  New  Haven  with 
his  wife  and  take  charge  of  the  new  school  which  we  now 
know  by  that  name. 

This  new  schoolmaster  was  a  Londoner  by  birth,  and  was 
now  twenty-seven  years  old.  He  was  to  receive  the  £40 
salary  appropriated  by  the  General  Court  and  "to  keep 
school"  and  "fit  the  scholars  for  the  College"  shortly  to  be 


88  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

established.  His  first  act  was  to  secure  £io  more  salary, 
and  a  house,  besides  the  board  and  fees  from  the  scholars 
who  came  into  New  Haven  from  the  neighboring  towns  to 
the  new  school.  While  this  young  man  remained  but  a  year, 
and  then  left  to  be  the  minister  at  Saybrook,^  under  him  John 
Davenport's  educational  machinery  seemed  finally  to  be  in 
motion.  All  that  remained  for  its  permanent  success  was 
the  receipt  of  the  Hopkins  money. 

This,  however,  was  not  forthcoming.  Connecticut  inter- 
posed unexpected  obstacles  to  the  division  of  the  estate  as 
planned,  the  General  Court  appointed  an  administrator,  this 
officer  stopped  all  collections  and  managed  to  lose  track  of 
some  of  them,  and  for  the  next  five  years  the  whole  affair 
was  held  up,  for  reasons  which  we  shall  shortly  describe. 

All  of  which  was  undoubtedly  enough  to  dishearten  the 
most  vigorous  of  Puritan  fighters  in  Christ's  service.  And 
John  Davenport  was  disheartened  enough.  To  add  to  his 
troubles,  his  New  Haven  people  again  held  back  from  sup- 
porting the  new  school.  The  Colony  Grammar  School  had 
been  established,  the  town  had  the  Hopkins  trust  papers, 
a  schoolmaster  had  been  found,  "oratory"  had  been  added 
as  a  curriculum  attraction  and  the  opening  hours  accommo- 
datingly moved  forward  a  full  hour  until  eight  o'clock  of 
winter  mornings.  But  nobody  seemed  to  want  it.  In  1661 
only  five  or  six  boys  were  again  coming  for  instruction,  and 
the  disheartened  new  schoolmaster  unceremoniously  de- 
parted. A  year  later,  the  General  Court,  concluding  that, 
"considering  the  distraction  of  the  time"  and  probable 
further  costs,   "the  end  is  not  attained  for  which  it  was 

1  Jeremiah  Peck  was  probably  the  second  instructor  of  Abraham  Pierson, 
the  Collegiate  School's  first  Rector,  who  was  then  fifteen  years  of  age  and 
preparing  for  Harvard  College.  Peck  later  returned  to  Guilford,  emigrated 
with  his  father-in-law,  Robert  Kitchell,  with  the  Branford  party  of  the 
elder  Pierson  to  Newark,  and  later  preached  at  Waterbury,  where  he  died 
in  1699. 


Downfall  of  the  New  Haven  Republic        89 

settled  no  way  proportionable  to  the  charges  expended," 
voted  point-blank  to  give  up  the  whole  enterprise.  For  a 
year  or  two,  one  George  Pardee  of  the  town,  an  old  pupil 
of  Ezekiel  Cheever's,  was  engaged  to  teach  English  and 
writing  to  the  handful  of  boys  who  still  attended  the  town 
school,  and  "carry  them  on  in  Latin  so  far  as  he  could." 
But  this  was  apparently  a  very  little  way.  The  great  school 
project  of  Davenport,  and  with  it  the  immediate  prospect  of 
his  "college,"  had  again, — and,  as  it  was  to  turn  out, 
finally, — collapsed. 

II 

The  withholding  of  New  Haven's  share  in  the  Hopkins 
bequest  by  the  Connecticut  General  Assembly  was  not,  as 
we  may  now  look  at  it  through  the  perspective  of  two 
centuries  and  a  half,  as  badly  advised  as  John  Davenport 
and  his  New  Haven  supporters  naturally  considered  it.  For 
events  were  shaping  themselves  on  a  new  and  broader  scale 
throughout  New  England,  and  In  these  Connecticut  and 
New  Haven  had  their  share. 

The  Restoration  of  Charles  is  a  landmark  in  the  history 
of  the  relations  between  New  England  and  old  England,  as 
it  is  In  the  history  of  Puritanism  as  a  political  factor  in 
England  Itself.  Charles  II  ascended  his  father's  throne 
on  May  25,  1660.  Ending,  as  this  did  in  one  swinging  blow, 
the  ascendancy  of  the  Roundhead  party  at  home,  the  most 
eminent  of  that  party's  leaders  were  at  once  blacklisted 
(among  them  that  early  friend  of  Harvard,  Sir  Harry 
Vane,  whose  head  was  enthusiastically  chopped  off  by  the 
new  government  at  the  first  opportunity) .  The  effect  of  the 
change  was  immediately  felt  In  the  New  England  colonies, 
where  the  news  of  it  was  received  with  dismay  by  the  domi- 
nating orthodox  Puritan  leaders.  If  Massachusetts  was  at 
once  to  find  herself  in  serious  political  complications  with 


90  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

the  new  Royal  government,  New  Haven,  one  of  the  four 
confederated  New  England  colonies,  was  in  an  even  worse 
plight.  Unlike  Massachusetts,  New  Haven  had  no  charter 
from  the  King,  or  any  patent  to  its  land  titles  from  any- 
one,— in  fact  had  deliberately  settled  in  the  New  World 
without  it,  and,  as  we  have  seen,  had  never  acquired  one 
afterwards.  Its  leader,  Davenport,  had  been  a  particularly 
strong  anti-Royalist,  and  was  considered  to  be  among  the 
chief,  though  distant,  surviving  supporters  of  the  Cromwell 
regime.  And  New  Haven,  as  Massachusetts,  was  in  espe- 
cially bad  odor  with  the  King  because  of  its  strict  measures 
against  the  Quakers,  whose  persecutions  the  politic  Charles 
II,  intent  upon  theological  toleration  for  quite  untheological 
purposes  of  his  own,  at  once  undertook  to  stop. 

To  add  to  their  long  list  of  mistakes,  the  New  Haven 
people  now  took  a  step  of  hardly  concealed  hostility  against 
the  new  English  ruler.  This,  as  matters  turned  out,  was  a 
decidedly  serious  one.  The  young  Governor  John  Win- 
throp  of  Connecticut  had  secured,  on  March  14,  1660,  the 
passage  by  his  legislature  of  a  fulsome  proclamation  of  the 
new  King.  As  the  immediate  future  was  to  disclose,  this 
was  a  highly  politic  act,  as  it  brought  the  little  Connecticut 
Colony  to  the  gratified  attention  of  the  King  hardly  had  he 
ascended  his  throne,  and,  very  possibly,  gave  him  his  first 
knowledge  that  there  was  such  a  place.  New  Haven  did 
not  do  this.  In  fact,  John  Davenport's  people  proceeded  in 
quite  the  contrary  direction,  ostentatiously  hiding  William 
Goffe  and  Edward  Whalley,  the  Regicides  of  the  King's 
father,  while  perspiring  and  exasperated  Royal  officers  were 
hunting  for  them.  It  is  said  that  old  John  Davenport  even 
secreted  the  two  Cromwellian  soldiers  and  judges  In  his  own 
house  on  lower  Elm  Street,  and  that  he  preached  a  highly 
independent  sermon  to  the  English  posse  on  the  unequivocal 
text,  "Hide  the  outcasts." 


Downfall  of  the  New  Haven  Republic        91 

It  was  at  this  juncture  that  Connecticut  sent  young  Gov- 
ernor Winthrop  to  England,  with  £500  for  "expenses,"  to 
see  what  he  could  do  for  his  Colony  with  the  new  King. 
Evidently  fearing  that  New  Haven's  interests  might  not 
receive  equal  attention  with 

Connecticut's,  the  New         /^Li^'   4*-f/y  *     /^^i- 
Haven  General  Court  now    ^M^^   nA/Wf^Tj^ 
rather  tardily  drew  up   a 

document  for  Winthrop  to  take  with  him, — which  docu- 
ment, while  it  finally  proclaimed  the  restoration  of  Charles, 
did  so  in  such  a  grudging  manner  that  it  had  better  not  have 
been  done  at  all.  The  New  Haven  Colony,  said  this  paper, 
had  not  received  any  formal  notification  of  the  accession  of 
Charles  II,  yet  had  "thought  fit"  to  acknowledge  him  to  be 
"their  sovereign."  This  diplomatic  effort  was  little  calculated 
to  excite  King  Charles'  enthusiasm  for  the  weak  and  inde- 
pendent Cromwellian  settlement  on  the  Quinnipiac,  lorded 
over,  as  it  was,  by  so  well  known  a  Roundhead  as  the 
fanatical  John  Davenport.  Moreover,  New  Haven  sent 
no  "expense"  account  with  it,  as  had  Connecticut,  to  see 
that  it  reached  the  King.^  What  happened  might  have  been 
expected.  Though  Winthrop,  for  many  years  a  close  friend 
of  Davenport,  had  verbally  agreed  to  the  contrary,  he  sent 
back  in  1662  a  new  Connecticut  charter,  under  which  his 
legislature  immediately  claimed  New  Haven's  inclusion. 

1  Whether  John  Winthrop  had  to  bribe  his  way  to  the  King  is  not  fully- 
established.  It  was  a  pleasant  little  habit  of  the  times.  Winthrop  had  a 
good  friend  at  Court  in  old  Lord  Say  and  Sele,  a  member  of  the  august 
Privy  Council  and  of  the  Council  for  Plantations.  Saybrook  was  named 
partly  for  him  under  the  patent  that  included  it,  and  Winthrop  had  been 
Saybrook's  first  Governor.  But  Winthrop  was  a  polished  man  of  the  world, 
and  had,  so  Professor  C.  M.  Andrews  writes,  "great  tact  and  an  attractive 
personality."  Cotton  Mather  relates  that  at  the  right  moment  in  these 
negotiations  over  this  charter,  Winthrop  gave  to  Charles  II  a  ring  that 
the  King's  father  had  given  his  own  father  when  the  latter  was  Governor 
of  Massachusetts. 


92  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

A  great  deal  has  been  said  on  this  matter  of  Connecticut's 
arbitrary  grabbing  of  the  New  Haven  Colony,  and  the  Con- 
necticut leaders  have  more  than  once  been  pilloried  by  his- 
torians for  their  action.  And  one  may  hardly  deny  that  the 
act,  in  itself,  was  decidedly  aggressive  and,  in  many  respects, 
unfair.  A  restudy  of  the  contemporaneous  documents 
would  seem  to  bear  out  this  interpretation, — particularly 
the  very  feelingly-written  letter  which  New  Haven's  General 
Court  asked  John  Davenport  and  his  assistant  minister, 
Mr.  Street,  to  draw  up  and  which  was  not  finished  in  time 
to  avert  the  absorption.  This  letter,  entitled  "New  Haven's 
case  stated,"  now  In  the  archives  at  Hartford,  states  plainly 
the  New  Haven  leaders'  claim  of  complete  legal  title  to 
their  land  and  of  independence.  Against  the  "unjust  pre- 
tences and  encroachments  upon  our  just  and  proper  rights," 
it  sets  forth  that  the  original  New  Haven  settlers  had  chosen 
Quinnipiac,  proposed  to  buy  land  there  from  the  "natural 
proprietors,"  the  Indians,  and  so  "signified  to  their  friends 
In  Hartford  in  Connecticut  Colony."  They  had  received 
"a  satisfactory  answer,"  had  so  informed  the  Massa- 
chusetts Colony,  "and  with  their  consent  began  a  plan- 
tation" on  land  "which  they  did  purchase  of  the 
Indians."  This  land  they  had  "quietly  possessed  about 
six  and  twenty  years,  and  have  buried  great  estates  in  build- 
ings, fencings,  clearing  the  ground,  and  In  all  sorts  of  hus- 
bandry, without  any  help  from  Connecticut  or  dependence 
upon  them."  They  had  done  all  this  "upon  such  funda- 
mentals as  were  established  In  Massachusetts,"  a  copy  of 
which  the  Connecticut  WInthrop's  father  (then  the  Massa- 
chusetts Governor)  had  sent  to  them.  Connecticut  had 
never  questioned  all  this,  nor  had  made  any  difficulty  over 
the  erection  of  the  "New  Haven  Colony."  Nor  had  the 
up-river  Colony  "objected  against  our  being  a  distinct 
colony."     The  New  Haven  letter  also  set  forth  that  when 


Downfall  of  the  New  Haven  Republic        93 


the  Dutch  (In  1648)  had  "claimed  a  right  to  New  Haven," 
New  Haven  had  "caused  the  King's  arms  to  be  fairly  cut  in 
wood,  and  set  upon  a  post  in  the  highway  by  the  sea-side," 
without  asking  Connecticut's  permission;  that  in  1643  the 
New  England  Confederation  had  been  established,  in  which 
New  Haven  had  been  accepted  as  one  of  the  four  distinct 
members,  on  an  equal  basis  with  Massachusetts,  Plymouth, 
and  Connecticut;  that,  in  1644,  being  without  a  legal  patent 
to  their  land  from  the  King,  New  Haven  had,  with  Con- 
necticut's approval,  dispatched  one  of  their  magistrates  In 
the  Lamberton  ship  to  solicit  a  charter  from  the  first 
Charles  [then,  however,  not  In  power],  but  that  the  ship 
had  been  lost  at  sea,  and  the  attempt  had  not  been  repeated 
owing  to  "the  troubles  In  England."  And  that  the  New 
Haven  Colony  bounds  had  been  established  on  the  Dutch 
frontier  In  1650  with  full  consent  of  Connecticut. 


94  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

All  of  which  rather  went  to  prove  that,  until  this  occa- 
sion, the  Connecticut  leaders  had  considered  New  Haven  to 
be  a  separate  and  independent  commonwealth,  though 
without  charter  right  to  that  independence  from  the  King. 
"Whereby,"  says  the  Davenport  letter  of  1664  to  the  new 
generation  of  Connecticut  leaders  at  Hartford,  "the  differ- 
ence of  times,  and  of  men's  spirits  in  them,  may  be  dis- 
covered. For  then  the  magistrates  of  Connecticut  with 
consent  of  their  General  Court,  knowing  our  purposes,  de- 
sired to  join  with  New  Haven  in  procuring  the  patent.  But 
now  they  seek  to  procure  a  patent  without  the  concurrence 
of  New  Haven,  and  contrary  to  our  minds  expressed  before 
the  patent  was  sent  for,  and  to  their  own  promise,  and  to  the 
terms  of  the  confederation,  and  without  sufficient  warrant 
from  their  patent,  they  have  invaded  our  right,  and  seek  to 
involve  New  Haven  under  Connecticut  jurisdiction." 

Which,  we  may  believe,  was  quite  true.  And  the  uncom- 
fortable fact  was  that  Governor  Winthrop  had  been  asked 
by  letter  "not  to  have  his  hand  in  so  unrighteous  an  act" 
and  "was  pleased  to  certify,  in  two  letters,  that  no  such 
thing  was  intended,  but  rather  the  contrary,"  and  that  New 
Haven  was  to  be  left  free  to  join  with  Connecticut  or  not 
as  it  saw  fit.  That  Winthrop  so  intended  matters  to  turn 
out,  was,  I  fancy,  quite  the  fact.  For,  before  he  had  re- 
turned to  Connecticut,  Winthrop  had  written  to  his  leaders 
at  home  to  let  New  Haven  alone;  that  they  did  not  follow 
his  advice  was  very  likely  not  his  fault.  By  the  time  he  did 
return,  matters  had  gone  so  far  that  there  was  no  further 
chance  of  stopping  them,  and  the  arbitrary  inclusion  of  New 
Haven  had  become  a  fact. 

Ill 

Yet  I  imagine  that  we  may  not  lay  all  of  this  sudden  and, 
on  the  face  of  it,  bad  turn  of  events  to  Connecticut  alone, 


Downfall  of  the  New  Haven  Republic        95 

or  lay  too  much  stress  on  the  unfairness  of  that  Colony's 
acts.  Matters  in  both  the  New  Haven  church  and  state  had 
not  been  progressing  smoothly  throughout  all  these  years, — 
the  ship  of  state  had  been  bumping  along  on  as  rocky  a 
bottom  as  had  the  educational  system  that  I  have  been  telling 
about.  The  fact  was  that  John  Davenport's  idealistic  com- 
munity had  not  been  proving  the  success  that  he  had  planned 
it  to  be.  From  internal  uprisings  against  the  system  laid 
down  in  that  famous  meeting  in  Mr.  Newman's  barn,  it 
was  nearing  its  wreck  regardless  of  interferences  from 
without.  The  fundamental  policy  of  the  Colony,  that 
church  members  alone  should  have  the  franchise,  had  been 
largely  responsible  for  this.    We  have  seen  how  Connecticut 


Governor  J^efes 
9mffor(f  d{ouse  y 


g6  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

had  been  settled  on  the  Plymouth  plan  and  had  worked  out 
that  plan  into  the  first  broad  modern  democracy  of  New 
England  history.  New  Haven  was  now  reaping  the  harvest 
of  a  narrower  plan,  quite  as  Massachusetts  herself,  after  a 
prolonged  argument  with  the  uqw  King  and  his  successor, 
was  to  reap  her  harvest.  Leading  this  new  generation  was 
a  new  group  of  men,  to  whom  the  church-state  scheme  of 
the  original  settlers  (among  whom  John  Davenport  and 
old  Abraham  Pierson  of  Branford  now  stood  as  the  nearly 
sole  survivors)  was  no  longer  the  desirable  political  organi- 
zation that  Davenport  had  dreamed  it  was  to  be.  These 
new  leaders  in  the  outlying  settlements  of  the  Judisdiction, 
such  as  Guilford,  Stamford,  and  Southold,  L.  I.,  had  come 
to  be  in  the  majority  against  the  autocratic  church-rule 
emanating  from  New  Haven.  Without  regard  to  what 
Connecticut  had  in  mind  in  her  new  charter,  these  towns 
were  now  almost  unanimously  in  favor  of  leaving  New 
Haven  and  joining  the  older  colony.  This  spirit  had  come 
to  a  head  in  Guilford  in  1663.  When  the  controversy  be- 
tween New  Haven  and  Connecticut  over  the  absorption  was 
at  its  height,  a  Guilford  man  had  put  himself  under  Con- 
necticut's legal  protection.  This  enterprising  person  had 
induced  two  Connecticut  constables  to  come  down  to  Guil- 
ford "with  sundry  others"  to  show  their  authority,  which 
they  did  by  galloping  into  the  sleepy  little  village  in  the  dead 
of  night  and  "shooting  off  sundry  guns,"  thereby  throwing 
the  quiet  community  into  great  excitement.  Governor  Leete, 
of  Guilford,  though  a  Connecticut-party  man,  had  no  liking 
for  this  sort  of  thing  and  sent  friends  to  Branford  and  New 
Haven  for  help.  A  disorganized  rabble  of  New  Haven- 
party  settlers  responding,  the  Hartford  gentry  discreetly 
withdrew  and  Governor  Leete  requested  the  Connecticut 
Colony  to  suspend  further  show  of  authority  until  the  ques- 
tion had  been  threshed  out  between  the  two  Colonies. 


Downfall  of  the  New  Haven  Republic        97 

Y^t  at  its  best,  the  New  Haven  plan  had  never  been  a 
complete  political  success.  When  the  town  had  been  origi- 
nally laid  out,  "quarters,"  or  sections  had  been  occupied 
by  the  various  original  parties.  The  idea  seems  to  have 
been  for  the  Kent,  Yorkshire,  Herefordshire,  and  London 
groups  to  maintain  separate,  almost  "township"  characters. 
Davenport's  views,  however,  could  not  have  been  wholly 
acceptable  to  them.  The  Herefordshire  people,  under 
Prudden,  removed  to  Milford  almost  immediately,  and 
were  never  in  entire  sympathy  with  the  Davenport  church- 
state  thereafter,  though  a  part  of  it.  The  Yorkshire  con- 
tingent, arriving  later  than  the  first  planters,  remained  only 
after  their  minister  found  it  impossible  to  join  Davenport's 
fantastic  schemes.  The  Kent  party,  under  Whitfield,  soon 
settled  at  Guilford,  and  were  never  in  close  touch.  All 
through  the  eighteen  years  of  the  New  Haven  Jurisdiction, 
the  evidence  is  cumulative  that  John  Davenport  was  having 
no  easy  time  of  it  in  his  effort  to  create  his  own  kind  of  a 
theocracy.  This  trouble  had  been  increasing  as  the  older 
leaders  fell  away  and  a  new  and  younger  group  came  on. 

Branford  and  Milford,  however,  had  stood  with  the  con- 
servative majority  of  New  Haven  during  these  years.  In 
the  former  town  Abraham  Pierson  had  supported  John 
Davenport  with  all  the  energy  of  one  of  the  most  sturdy 
Puritan  pioneers  of  the  four  colonies.  But  this  support  was 
not  sufficient  to  ward  off  the  coming  end.  The  New  Haven 
Jurisdiction  sent  an  appeal  to  the  old  Confederation,  but 
nothing  came  of  it.  They  rained  appeals  and  protests  upon 
the  Connecticut  General  Assembly  and  nothing  came  of 
them.  They  stood  their  ground  manfully  in  their  own 
General  Court.  But  to  no  effect.  The  younger  element  in 
the  Jurisdiction  was  going  over  to  Winthrop's  Connecticut, 
Governor  Leete  had  become  an  advocate  of  the  absorption 
under  the  new  charter,  the  long-suffering  non-church  mem- 


98  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

bers  of  the  Colony  broke  out  into  a  most  hostile  attitude  on 
the  ground  that  the  New  Haven  Court  had  no  independent 
legal  status  under  the  new  English  King,  as  indeed  it  hadn't. 
The  long-coming  tidal  wave  of  discontent  over  John 
Davenport's  famous  theocracy  was  now  thundering  in. 
Several  elected  magistrates  in  New  Haven  refused  to  serve 
their  terms.  There  was  no  money  to  pay  the  civil  magis- 
trates. The  new  party  was  strengthening  itself  with  the 
passage  of  each  new  week.  The  other  towns  of  the  Colony 
were  divided  and  were  slowly  turning  toward  the  Con- 
necticut plan.  The  Court  itself  was  challenged  (that  court 
which  was  to  dispense  the  laws  of  Moses  to  the  new 
metropolis  of  Governor  Eaton) .  There  were  not  enough 
supporters  of  the  Davenport  theocracy  left  to  fill  the  magis- 
trates' chairs.  The  end  was  now  in  sight  of  that  Utopia 
that  John  Davenport  had  so  ardently  planned  but  a  little 
over  a  quarter-century  before.  Matters  had  become 
desperate  indeed. 

But  John  Davenport  still  held  out,  sturdy  old  fighting 
Calvinist  that  he  was.  For  three  years  more,  until  March, 
1665,  he  continued  his  fight  to  keep  New  Haven  out  of  the 
new  Connecticut,  refusing  all  sops  and  compromises,  even 
the  offer  to  make  New  Haven  a  joint  Assembly  town  with 
Hartford.  Then  he  had  to  give  in.  New  Haven  voted  to 
send  her  belated  delegates  to  the  Connecticut  Assembly, 
and,  with  this  act,  the  old  New  Haven  Colony,  the  Utopian 
city  of  the  idealistic  John  Davenport,  became  by  its  own 
acquiescence  an  integral  part  of  that  Connecticut  which  we 
have  since  then  known. 

But  even  this  was  not  done  without  protest.  In  1666, 
twenty-three  irreconcilable  settlers  from  Branford,  under 
the  unchangeable  and  adamantine  Abraham  Pierson,  and 
forty-one  from  New  Haven,  Milford,  and  Guilford,  re- 
moved to  Newark,  New  Jersey,  there  to  carry  on  the  origi- 


Downfall  of  the  New  Haven  Republic        99 

nal  New  Haven  plan  of  a  Puritan  church-state  for  a  few 
remaining  years,  when,  as  we  shall  see,  it  disappears  from 
American  colonial  history. 

IV 

We  may  picture  the  venerable  founder  of  this  now 
crumbled  church-state,  in  these  last  days  of  his  stay  at  New 
Haven.  A  tall  and  now  emaciated  figure,  he  sits,  maybe,  at 
his  high  writing-desk  in  the  old  study  of  his  great  Elm 
Street  house.  From  his  window  he  may  look  down  across 
tilled  fields  and  orchards  to  the  harbor  shore,  where  the 
three  or  four  trading  sloops  of  his  parishioners  are  now 
awaiting  their  first  sailings  of  the  new  Spring  commerce. 
Through  the  bare  tree-tops  he  may  look  at  the  thatched-roof 
lines  of  the  scattered  homes  of  his  people,  whom  he  had 
essayed  so  confidently,  twenty  odd  years  before,  to  lead,  as 
Moses  led  his  people,  Into  the  Promised  Land.  About  him 
are  the  shelves  of  his  library,  loaded  with  the  old  uncompro- 
mising Calvlnlstic  books  that  formed  one  of  the  great  libra- 
ries of  his  day.  I  think  that,  feel  as  we  may  about  the 
impossibility  of  the  great  life  plan  that  he  had  tried  to  carry 
out.  It  Is  a  pathetic  scene  that  we  may  now  look  in  upon, 
and  a  pathetic  figure  in  the  center  of  it.  If  still  a  vigorous 
one.  From  under  the  small  black  skullcap  of  the  old  man's 
sacred  calling,  escape  the  short  rolls  of  his  curly  and  now 
snow-white  hair.  Under  the  high-arched  eyebrows  that  we 
may  see  in  the  portrait  left  to  us  of  him,  the  prominent  black 
eyes  still  hold  the  holy  fire  of  that  youth  and  young  manhood 
which  he  had  devoted  to  God's  service,  as  he  saw  It,  on 
earth.  He  wears  a  small  level  white  moustache  and  a  white 
tuft  under  his  lower  lip.  His  broad,  square,  white  Geneva 
band  fits  closely  under  his  chin  and  flares  down  on  his  black 
silk  gown,  over  his  erect  If  narrow  shoulders.  He  may  well 
feel  himself  the  last  of  that  first  great  company  of  devout 


lOO  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

English  Puritans  who  had  begun  life  anew,  with  their 
devoted  congregations,  in  the  free  New  World.  Theophilus 
Eaton,  friend  of  his  boyhood  in  the  old  walled  city  of 
Coventry,  has  gone;  Thomas  Hooker,  of  Hartford,  and 
John  Cotton,  of  Boston,  have  passed  on  to  the  immortal 
Utopia  of  their  Puritan  faith.  Winthrop,  Bradford, 
Brewster,  all  had  left  their  earthly  stage.  A  new  generation 
was  taking  that  stage,  and  were  reshaping  the  old  theocracy 
of  the  first  generation  to  meet  conditions  of  the  second. 
New  Haven,  which  he  had  built  to  become  an  independent 
community  governed  by  its  own  religious  voters,  was  now 
a  part  of  that  Connecticut,  whose  more  liberal  theory  of 
government  he  had  from  the  first  looked  upon  as  dangerous 
and  degenerating  to  the  purity  of  the  church.  A  new  King 
had  come  to  England,  who  was  stamping  out  the  Puritanism 
of  the  older  days  with  an  iron  heel.  "Christ's  interest"  in 
New  Haven,  John  Davenport  may  well  have  said,  "was 
miserably  lost."  Even  now  his  people  would  be  able  to  send 
to  the  new  Connecticut  Assembly,  under  the  Half-way  Cove- 
nant which  he  had  so  devoutly  fought,  public  representatives 
who  knew  not  the  pioneer  church  and  over  whom,  as  their 
souls'  pastor,  he  would  have  no  control.  His  life  work 
seemed  over. 

And  yet,  I  take  it,  the  fighting  spirit  of  this  old  Puritan 
pioneer  was  still  far  from  being  downed.  If  he  had  lost 
everything  in  New  Haven,  there  were  other  worlds  to  con- 
quer, or  at  least  to  help  preserve  against  the  encroachments 
of  the  new  spirit  of  the  times.  Before  him,  as  he  sits  at 
that  old  study  desk  from  which  so  many  chastenings  had 
gone  forth  these  many  years  to  his  flock,  is  the  letter  that 
he  has  received  from  the  old  First  Church  of  Boston,  whose 
aged  pastor,  Rev.  John  Wilson,  has  just  died.  In  It  is  a 
call  to  him  to  their  pulpit  as  the  single  remaining  great 
champion,  with  Harvard's  president,  Charles  Chauncey,  of 


Downfall  of  the  New  Haven  Republic       loi 

the  original  church  purity  of  New  England.  Should  he 
leave  New  Haven  and  go?  We  may  imagine  the  old  New 
Haven  leader  weighing  the  matter  as  he  looks  out  upon  the 
village  which  no  longer  is  his  own,  as  it  has  been  these 
twenty-five  full  years.  In  Massachusetts  one  last  stand 
against  the  rising  tide  of  liberalism  and  secularism  may  at 
least  be  attempted,  side  by  side  with  that  young  Increase 
Mather  who  was  now  coming  to  the  front  as  the  champion 
of  the  old  ways.    He  decides  to  go. 

In  April,  1668,  all  but  thirty  years  to  perhaps  a  day  from 
that  first  promising  arrival  on  the  virgin  Quinnipiac  soil, 
John  Davenport  delivers  his  farewell  sermon  in  the  rough 
Meeting-house  on  the  New  Haven  Market-place,  and  with 
his  books  and  belongings,  his  "clock  and  his  seven  high 
chairs,"  his  plate  and  china,  leaves  for  Boston  where,  two 
years  later,  he  is  to  die.  That  great  rainstorm  which  over- 
took him  as  he  and  his  family  entered  Boston,  driving  them 
to  friendly  refuge,  may  well  have  seemed  to  him  the  all  but 
final  extinction  of  God's  friendly  protection  to  one  of  his 
most  loyal  yet  hard-used  sons. 


fr^^^^^M^€^ 


PART  II 

THE  FOUNDING  OF  THE  COLLEGIATE 
SCHOOL 


.ridrds  \; :■■;■■ 
(^oat'ofTirras . 


..-^^^^i^ 


e^fv 


CHAPTER  I 

CONNECTICUT  AFTER  1664 

I 

HE  independent  New  Haven  church- 
state  being  thus  extinguished  in  its  ab- 
sorption by  Connecticut,  there  now 
ensued  a  period  of  two  decades  during 
which  the  New  Haven  college  project 
slumbered,  and  events  of  a  still  larger 
nature  were  occurring  in  New  Eng- 
land. Such  a  broad  review  of  those 
events  as  will  be  necessary  to  our  purpose  of  recalling  the 
background  of  Yale's  beginnings  need  be  but  a  brief  one. 

Two  years  after  Charles  II,  Romanist-Protestant,  had 
succeeded  to  the  Stuart  throne,  the  first  result  of  the  over- 
throw of  Puritanism  as  a  political  power  in  England  had 
shown  itself  on  St.  Bartholomew's  Day,  1662,  when  one 
out  of  five  of  all  the  English  rectors  and  vicars  were  driven 
out  of  their  parishes  for  nonconformity  to  the  established 
Church.  A  correlative  of  this  sweeping  action  was  the 
commencement  of  Royal  toleration  for  the  Catholic  and 
Quaker.  And  it  was  in  connection  with  the  latter  incident 
that  New  England  came  into  its  first  important  collision  with 
the  new  King.  Exponents  of  eccentric  theological  theories 
had  from  the  earliest  days  been  treated  with  severity  in 
Massachusetts.  Mrs.  Anne  Hutchinson's  Antinomian  here- 
sies had  been  stamped  out,  as  we  have  seen,  when  John 
Davenport  was  spending  his  first  year  in  New  England. 
Roger  Williams  had  been  banished  for  his  views.     A  law 


io6  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

"against  strangers"  had  been  voted.  The  quaint  and 
crotchety  Gorton,  once  a  London  tailor  and  then  "professor 
of  the  mysteries  of  Christ"  in  Massachusetts,  had  defended 
his  wife's  servant  at  her  trial  for  smiling  in  church  and  been 
banished  from  Plymouth,  later  to  be  shuffled  from  Mas- 
sachusetts to  Rhode  Island,  in  which  latter  colony  he  died 
at  a  great  age  (his  last  surviving  neighbor  informing  the 
inquiring-minded  Ezra  Stiles  in  1771  that  he  was  still 
writing  his  books  in  Heaven).  There  had  been  a  Presby- 
terian conspiracy  that  had  gone  as  far  as  the  preparation  of 
papers  asking  that  Presbyterianism  be  established  by  Parlia- 
ment as  the  institutional  New  England  Church;  this  had 
been  squelched  by  heavy  fines  and  imprisonments  of  the  con- 
spirators. The  Baptist  persecutions  of  1651  had  followed, 
ending  in  the  Colony  vote  to  banish  all  persons  who  were 
disbelievers  in  infant  baptism,  and  in  the  final  theocratic 
organization  of  New  England  Puritanism  under  the  Cam- 
bridge Platform. 

But  these  cases,  thus  disposed  of  in  turn  for  the  preserva- 
tion of  the  purity  of  the  original  churches,  were  unimportant 
compared  with  the  great  struggle  against  the  Quakers  which 
came  to  its  height  just  before  Charles  II  was  restored.  The 
arrival  of  advance  agents  of  George  Fox's  teachings  had 
been  looked  upon  by  the  Boston  orthodox  Congregational- 
ists  as  a  direct  attack  upon  their  most  fundamental  concep- 
tion of  the  Massachusetts  church-state.  The  extraordinary 
persecutions  of  these  people  that  at  once  began  (and  which 
were  not  in  the  least  degree  allayed  by  the  somewhat  brag- 
gart acts  of  the  Quakers  themselves)  were  a  forerunner 
of  the  later  Massachusetts  acts  against  "witches."  Not 
only  Massachusetts,  but  the  other  three  Colonies  in  the  New 
England  Union  of  the  day  passed  "banishing  laws"  against 
the  Quakers,  New  Haven  (dubbing  them  "a  cursed  sect 
lately  risen  up  in  the  world")  among  them.    Governor  Endi- 


Connecticut  after  1664  107 

cott  of  Massachusetts  went  further,  and,  with  the  Rev.  John 
Norton  (Cotton's  successor  in  the  Boston  church),  secured 
the  passage  of  a  Colony  law  inflicting  the  death  penalty  on 
the  sect, — a  law  which  was  literally  put  into  effect  on  Boston 
Commons  in  1659,  the  wife  of  Rhode  Island's  Secretary, 
one  of  the  prisoners,  being  reprieved  by  her  son  only  at  the 
last  moment. 

The  first  public  act  of  Charles  II  concerning  New  Eng- 
land was  his  order  of  1661  suspending  any  more  of  these 
Quaker  trials  by  Endlcott.  But  this  act  of  the  new  King 
had  a  more  significant  side  to  It  than  the  mere  holding  back 
of  New  England's  hands  on  Its  own  church  enemies.  The 
Act  of  Uniformity,  indeed,  had  not  crossed  the  ocean,  but 
Charles  II,  now  that  he  had  sensed  the  New  England  situa- 
tion In  the  Quaker  incidents,  appears  to  have  cast  a  slant 
eye  toward  the  whole  political  and  religious  organization 
of  his  far-off  subjects.  Not  only  did  it  appear  to  him  (no 
doubt  as  suggested  by  the  various  discontented  settlers  who 
had  returned  to  England  to  state  their  grievances)  that  the 
New  England  people,  living  the  last  of  that  independent 
Puritan-church  life  that  he  had  just  ended  for  their  Puritan 
contemporaries  in  England,  were  much  too  independent  In 
that  life.  He  was  now  assured  that  the  New  England  Con- 
federacy Itself  was  rather  more  than  a  loose  protective 
organization,  and  had  In  It  the  threatening  germs  of  a  mili- 
tary union,  the  ultimate  intention  of  which  was  to  throw 
off,  by  force,  the  Royal  sovereignty.  We  have  seen  how 
John  Winthrop  had  easily  secured  the  new  Connecticut 
charter  and  included  New  Haven  In  It.  That  Charles  per- 
mitted this  may  have  been  because  he  looked  upon  It  as  an 
Indirect  way  of  breaking  up  this  confederacy  and  at  the  same 
time  punishing  New  Haven  both  for  Its  Quaker  laws,  its 
protection  of  the  two  Regicides,  and  Its  belated  proclama- 
tion of  his  own  ascension  to  the  English  throne.     How 


io8  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

Charles  now  proceeded  to  undermine  the  independence  of 
the  other  New  England  Colonies,  to  reorganize  them  on  his 
own  Royal  foundation,  and  to  produce  religious  and  politi- 
cal results  of  much  importance  to  our  chronicles,  may  now 
be  recalled. 

n 

The  nearly  complete  independence  to  this  time  of  primi- 
tive Massachusetts  from  England  had  very  largely  been  due 
to  its  remoteness  and  to  the  little  communication  between  the 
two  by  sea.  This  had  in  part  operated  to  keep  Charles  I 
from  interfering  with  its  development  as  an  independent 
commonwealth.  But  this  no  longer  was  to  be  the  case 
under  his  son.  The  Dutch  War  and  home  politics  had,  to 
be  sure,  allowed  New  England  affairs  to  drop  from  the 
new  King's  immediate  attention  in  his  first  few  years  on 
the  throne.  Besides  the  matters  just  mentioned,  the  Navi- 
gation Acts  of  1660  and  1663  had  been  the  only  large 
Royal  business  with  New  England  until  1672.  Charles  II 
had  been  content,  until  that  time,  to  assure  the  Massa- 
chusetts agents  that  their  charter  would  not  be  interfered 
with,  providing  the  colonists  swore  allegiance  to  him,  quit 
persecuting  his  Quaker  proteges,  changed  their  suffrage 
laws  so  as  to  permit  non-church  members  to  vote,  and  per- 
mitted Church  of  England  Episcopalians  to  worship  unmo- 
lested. But  he  now  went  a  step  farther.  The  Act  of  Trade 
of  1672  required  a  duty  to  be  paid  at  the  New  England  ports 
on  goods  which  were  not  to  be  shipped  to  England.  The 
English  view  of  the  New  England  colonies  seems  to  have 
been  that  they  were  "plantations,"  like  Virginia,  and,  as 
such,  should  properly  contribute  to  the  financial  good  of  the 
mother  country  rather  than  to  their  own.  Throughout  New 
England  quite  the  reverse  had  been  true  of  the  colonists' 
own  views  on  the  matter,  and  we  may  well  imagine  that  the 


Connecticut  after  1664  109 

New  Englanders  had.  paid  but  little  attention  to  the  Acts. 
By  1675  Charles  had  found  the  time  to  turn  again  to  New 
England  affairs,  the  "Lords  of  the  Committee  of  Trade  and 
Plantations"  had  been  formed  to  overlook  them,  and  the 
brusque  and  tactless  Edward  Randolph  sent  to  Boston  to 
see  how  the  Massachusetts  people  were  obeying  the  Royal 
orders. 

The  arrival  at  Boston  of  this  notoriously  high-and-mighty 
emissary  marks  the  beginning  of  a  new  era  for  the  inde- 
pendent old  Puritan  church-state  of  the  Bay,  as  indeed,  in 
its  far-reaching  results,  it  was  to  change  the  whole  com- 
plexion of  New  England  social  and  religious  life  and  to 
have  its  marked  effect  upon  Connecticut.  It  was  no  wonder 
that  the  doughty  Governor  Leverett  kept  his  hat  on  while 
he  read  the  King's  mes- 
sage, handed  to  him  with 
much  show  of  pomp  and 
ceremony  by  Randolph, 
and  that  he  deliberately 
inquired  as  he  returned  it  who  the  devil  the  "Henry 
Coventry"  was  who,  as  the  King's  chief  secretary  of  state, 
had  signed  it.  The  indignant  Randolph  reported  matters 
to  Charles  as  being  in  a  bad  way  in  Massachusetts,  the 
result  of  which  was  for  the  King  to  send  a  peremptory 
letter  to  that  Colony,  commanding,  this  time,  all  of  the 
things  which  in  1664  he  had  graciously  hoped  that  the 
colonists  would  do. 

And  thus  was  fired  that  famous  train  of  circumstances 
which  was  to  end,  in  1684,  in  the  annulling  of  the  Massa- 
chusetts Colony  charter,  as  the  town  charters  of  England 
had  been  annulled  at  almost  the  same  time,  and  in  the  in- 
coming of  a  broad  stream  of  English  authority  in  Massa- 
chusetts affairs.  The  succession  of  James  II,  a  year  later, 
did  not  better  matters;  they  at  once  became  worse  with  the 


no  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

arrival  of  Sir  Edmund  Andros  as  the  officially  appointed 
overlord,  or  Governor-General  of  all  New  York  and  New 
England,  Connecticut  included.  His  brief  but  haughty 
career  ended  in  1689.  The  reassertion  by  Massachusetts  of 
its  rights  to  a  Colony  charter  from  the  new  King,  the  Dutch 
Calvinist,  William  III,  resulted  in  the  new  and  different 
charter  of  1692,  which  was  secured  largely  through  the 
good  offices  of  Increase  Mather,  now  minister  at  Boston  and 
president  of  Harvard  College,  and  at  the  time  in  London. 
By  the  terms  of  this  charter  an  entirely  new  principle  had  to 
be  admitted  by  Massachusetts,  if  it  was  to  have  a  charter 
at  all — that  of  Royal  appointment  of  the  Colony  officers 
instead  of  the  previous  home  elections.  Freehold  property 
became,  through  it,  the  basis  of  political  rights;  appeals 
from  court  judgments  to  England  were  permitted,  and 
Royal  power  was  admitted  to  veto  Colony  bills.  Increase 
Mather,  champion  of  the  older  and  independent  order  that 
he  was,  returning  from  England  as  the  chief  supporter  of 
the  new  charter,  found  himself  widely  spoken  of  as  having 
"betrayed  his  country."  The  troubles  of  his  next  ttn  years, 
bringing  about,  as  they  did,  a  situation  at  Harvard  which 
was  to  have  its  important  effect  on  public  sentiment  in  Con- 
necticut toward  that  College,  were  nearly  all  traceable  to 
the  unlucky  day  when  he  accepted  the  new  charter  on  behalf 
of  his  Massachusetts  fellow  citizens. 

Ill 

While  these  large  matters  concerning  New  England's 
relations  with  the  changing  English  kings  were  proceeding 
abroad,  a  second  and  hardly  less  important  complication 
had  been  arising  at  home. 

The  primitive  Puritan  conception  of  a  church-state  in  the 
New  World  had  been  founded  on  a  lofty  ideal.    In  Massa- 


Connecticut  after  1664 


III 


chusetts,  and  as  we  have  seen  In  New  Haven,  this  had  taken 
the  form  of  such  a  close  relation  between  church  and  state 
that,  to  all  practical  purposes,  the  two  had  been  indistin- 
guishable. This  ideal  theory,  in  these  two  colonies,  had 
gone  so  far  as  to  establish  the  government  of  the  state  upon 
the  bed  rock  of  church  membership.^  During  the  first  years 
of  the  Bay  Colony  this  had  worked  out  fairly  well.  Reli- 
gion,— and  by  that  they  meant  the  orthodox  Calvinistic 
theology  of  the  original  settlers, — was  the  chief  passion  of 
these  early  founders,  and  the  maintenance  of  it,  in  all  its 

1  The  first  John  Winthrop  was  no  such  democrat  as  was  Thomas  Hooker. 
He  was  definitely  opposed  to  universal  suffrage.  "The  best  part  of  a  com- 
munity," he  wrote,  "is  always  the  least,  and  of  that  best  part  the  wiser  is 
always  the  lesser."  The  church-membership  franchise  of  early  Massa- 
chusetts and  New  Haven  was  built  on  this  oligarchical  theory,  Connecticut 
on  the  universal-suffrage  principle. 


112  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

original  purity,  their  chief  political  purpose.  To  maintain 
this  the  orthodox  leaders  had  seen  to  it  that  the  church 
membership  was  kept  within  the  circle  of  the  orthodox,  and 
this  had  very  naturally  resulted  in  the  ministers,  whose 
authority  in  that  matter  was  all  but  supreme,  becoming  very 
important  factors  in  the  civil  government  itself.  But  as  the 
years  had  passed,  and  the  original  stout-hearted  pioneers 
in  this  ideal  church-state  society  had  been  succeeded  by  a 
second  and  less-rigidly  orthodox  generation,  public  senti- 
ment in  Massachusetts  regarding  the  church-membership 
franchise  had  changed.  By  the  year  1684  it  was  said  that 
but  one  in  five  of  the  citizens  of  that  colony  were  church 
members  and  thus  voters  on  public  affairs.  The  "Half-way 
Covenant"  of  1657,  though  the  result  of  quite  different 
causes,  had  operated  to  ameliorate  this  condition,  and 
Charles  II  had  insisted  upon  the  entire  abolition  of  the  old 
suffrage  laws  just  before  he  died.  While  the  extension  of 
the  suffrage  to  non-church  members  was  slow,  it  was  fought 
with  tremendous  energy  by  the  older  party,  which  recog- 
nized in  its  approaching  success  the  end  of  the  old  regime. 
It  had  been  to  wage  a  final  fight  against  it,  as  we  have  seen, 
that  John  Davenport  had  left  New  Haven,  where  the  battle 
had  been  lost,  for  Boston,  where  it  was  still  proceeding  under 
President  Chauncey  of  Harvard.  Under  Andros  the  new 
party  had  had  for  the  moment  an  ascendancy,  but  the  mo- 
ment that  he  had  been  expelled,  the  orthodox  theocrats,  led 
by  Increase  Mather,  the  new  Harvard  leader,  had  regained 
their  ground. 

But  now,  in  the  charter  of  1692,  the  last  vestige  of  the 
old  religious  order,  in  so  far  as  its  political  side  was  con- 
cerned, had  passed  away  in  the  Royal  command  that  a 
property  qualification  should  replace  membership  in  the 
traditional  Massachusetts  churches  as  the  basis  for  the 
franchise.       The    disintegration    of    the    New    England 


Connecticut  after  1664  113 

churches,  which  had  been  coming  on  ever  since  the  days  of 
the  struggle  over  the  "Half-way  Covenant,"  now  proceeded 
by  rapid  strides.  Bereft  of  political  power,  the  churches 
now  found  themselves  losing  ground  as  a  spiritual  power. 
Five  years  had  not  passed  after  the  new  charter  had  been 
secured,  before  the  freethinking  element  among  the  Boston 
folk,  led  by  Thomas  Brattle  and  John  Coleman  and  John 
Leverett,  established  in  the  town  that  new  and  liberal 
church  which  led  Cotton  Mather  to  exclaim  in  his  diary:  "I 
see  Satan  beginning  a  terrible  shake  in  the  churches  of  New 
England.  Wherefore  I  set  apart  this  day  again  for  prayers 
in  my  study,  to  cry  mightily  unto  God."  The  breakup  of 
the  old  Massachusetts  Puritan  theocracy,  all  but  complete 
with  the  introduction  of  the  new  political  conditions  of  the 
charter  of  1692,  was  now  about  to  come  in  earnest.  The 
witchcraft  explosion  of  1692,  in  Salem  and  Boston,  was 
the  dying  convulsion  of  the  old  theocracy.  Under  such 
fanatical  leaders  as  Cotton  Mather  and  Stoughton  and  such 
temporarily  misguided  men  as  Samuel  Sewall,  the  older 
party's  intellectual  balance  seems  to  have  been  lost.  The 
progressive  leaders  of  the  new  party  would  have  none  of 
the  Salem  delusion. 

What  had  been  going  on  in  Connecticut  during  this  period 
now  calls  for  attention. 

IV 

Whatever  one  may  have  to  say  of  the  comparative  con- 
ditions in  the  two  commonwealths  in  later  years,  it  is  cer- 
tainly true  that  in  this  first  half-century  of  their  history, 
Connecticut,  excluding  primitive  New  Haven,  had  had  a 
broader  and  more  liberal  community  and  religious  life  than 
had  Massachusetts.  Thomas  Hooker  built  a  strong  social 
structure  in  that  crude  Connecticut  Colony  of  his  at  Hart- 
ford and  Windsor,  Wethersfield  and  Farmington, — a  struc- 


114  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

ture  which  rested  on  the  broadest  and  soundest  principles 
(viewed  from  our  modern  conception  of  a  democratic  gov- 
ernment) of  any  of  the  New  England  Colonies.  "In 
matters  of  greater  consequence,"  he  had  written  to  Gov- 
ernor Winthrop  on  his  removal  to  Connecticut,  "which 
concern  the  common  good,  a  general  council,  chosen  by  all, 
to  transact  business  which  concern  all,  I  conceive,  under 
favor,  most  suitable  to  rule  and  most  safe  for  relief  of  the 
whole."  In  his  sermons  Hooker  went  even  further,  and 
laid  down,  in  his  "assertion  of  the  right  of  the  people  not 
only  to  choose  but  to  limit  the  power  of  their  rulers  [as 
Johnston,  Connecticut's  historian,  says],  an  assertion  which 
lies  at  the  foundation  of  the  American  system.  .  .  .  The 
birthplace  of  American  democracy  is  Hartford." 

It  was  because  of  this  difference  between  the  two  Colonies 
that  Massachusetts,  during  these  years  after  1660,  had  had 
an  experience  more  akin  to  New  Haven's  early  history 
than  to  Connecticut's.  When  the  Connecticut  absorption 
of  New  Haven  had  come,  the  dissatisfied  old  Davenport 
party,  as  we  have  seen  in  the  elder  Pierson's  case,  and  again 
in  Davenport's,  left  to  carry  on  the  original  theocratic 
principles  in  other  places.     As  a  result,   Connecticut  had 

amalgamated    all    of    its 

^^emfyy^  ^^T^r/xA"  -v  x.  '^^''^^"S  public  elements, 
^"^y       j         •^  had    found    itself    practi- 

^^ — '  cally     rid     of     dissenters 

from  its  church-and-state  policy  for  the  next  twenty  years, 
and  thus  had  suffered  little  of  the  theological  and  political 
internal  turmoil  that  was  the  lot  of  Massachusetts,  still  bent 
on  carrying  out  the  original  theocratic  theory.  So  that  the 
suffrage  question  had  never  been  a  serious  one  either  in  the 
old  or  in  the  new  Connecticut. 

Nor  had  the  political  complications  of  the  older  colony 
with  England  had  their  counterpart  in  Connecticut.     The 


Connecticut  after  1664  115 

annulment  of  the  Connecticut  charter  had  not  been  officially 
enrolled,  as  it  had  happened,  when  Charles  II  had  sum- 
marily canceled  the  New  England  charters  in  1684.  The 
Colony  had  adroitly  avoided  giving  up  that  charter  to 
Andros  in  the  following  year  at  Hartford,  and  had  merely 
renewed  its  former  home  rule  under  the  original  charter 
when  William  III  succeeded  his  uncle.  Connecticut  hav- 
ing had  no  occasion  to  seek  a  new  charter,  as  Massachusetts 
had  been  obliged  to  do  in  1692,  thus  escaped  the  complica- 
tions that  we  have  recalled  in  the  older  colony.  With  the 
Winthrop  charter  of  1662,  Connecticut  entered  upon  a  long 
and  quiet  provincial  life,  without  internal  difficulties  of  any 
serious  sort,  enjoying  a  peacefulness  that  compares  strik- 
ingly, as  we  turn  the  yellowed  pages  of  the  ancient  histories, 
with  the  uproars  and  confusions,  political  and  theological, 
of  the  contemporary  Massachusetts.  So  careful  had  the 
Connecticut  people  been  to  avoid  notice  by  and  entangle- 
ments with  the  Crown,  that  they  had  managed  to  reinstate 
their  own  elected  magistrates  without  attracting  attention 
from  London,  and  even  succeeded  in  securing  a  legal  con- 
firmation from  the  Royal  Secretaries  in  England  of  their 
original  charter,  with  its  right  to  elect  their  own  Colony 
officers. 

While,  on  the  religious  side  that  was  so  prominent  a  part 
of  this  second  period  in  New  England  history,  Connecticut 
had  seen  after  1660  no  such  irruptions  as  had  exploded  in 
Boston,  a  very  considerable  change  had  taken  place  in  the 
attitude  of  the  people  toward  the  churches  and  the  place 
of  the  churches  in  the  state.  The  "Half-way  Covenant" — 
permitting  the  children  of  non-church  members  to  be  bap- 
tized— had  had  small  results  in  Connecticut,  so  far  as  any 
fundamental  change  in  the  suffrage  was  concerned.  Thomas 
Hooker  had  founded  his  Colony  on  that  very  freedom  of 
the    vote   which    it    took   the    "Half-way    Covenant"    and 


ii6  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

Charles  II  combined  to  force  upon  the  older  element  in 
Massachusetts.  And  for  the  first  decade  that  change  had 
had  little  or  no  effect  on  the  broadening  of  church  member- 
ship. The  real  difficulty  in  Connecticut  during  this  period 
seems  to  have  lain  in  the  continued  feeling  of  independence 
of  the  separate  church  congregations  from  legislative,  town, 
or  synod  control,  and  the  consequent  difficulties  of  settlement 
of  such  internal  troubles  as  they  had  over  the  choice  of  min- 
isters and  the  demand  of  outsiders  to  be  given  the  right  to 
vote  on  church  questions  in  return  for  their  duty  of  paying 
taxes  in  support  of  the  church  and  minister. 

Yet  there  had  been  one  very  great  public  change.  The 
gradual  adoption,  after  1664,  under  legislative  urging,  of 
the  "Half-way  Covenant"  had  resulted  (in  the  large)  in  a 
gradual  decline  of  the  church,  both  as  a  public  institution 
and  as  the  upholder  of  the  individual  religious  sentiment 
with  which  the  founders  of  the  colonies  had  been  so  ardently 
endowed.  So  that,  some  twenty  years  after  the  reorganiza- 
tion of  Connecticut,  matters  religious  had  reached  the 
lowest  point  in  the  history  of  the  Colony.  Divisions  in  the 
churches  had  sprung  up  broadcast,  and  the  widespread  reli- 
gious declension  had  resulted  in  a  number  of  originally 
strong  churches  (among  them  those  at  New  Haven,  Bran- 
ford,  and  Milford)  being  without  settled  ministers  for  pro- 
tracted periods.  If  the  educational  and  commercial  and 
political  ambitions  of  early  New  Haven  and  of  Connecticut 
had  by  1660  come  to  the  low  pass  described  in  previous 
pages,  two  decades  later  the  religious  plans  of  the  settlers 
had  fallen  into  as  sad  repute.  It  was  when  a  remedy  for 
this  situation  was  looked  for  as  described  in  the  following 
chapter  that  these  seacoast  towns  of  Connecticut  entered 
upon  a  renewed  agitation  of  the  project  for  John  Daven- 
port's Colony  college. 


5^ 


'ames 


CHAPTER  II 


NEW  HAVEN  AND  JAMES  PIERPONT 


E  left  the  Hopkins  Grammar  School 
starting  out  in  1668  as  a  small  en- 
dowed Latin  school  on  the  New  Haven 
Market-place,  under  the  management 
of  a  board  of  trustees  chosen  from 
the  New  Haven  church  and  town 
and  from  Connecticut  Colony  official- 
dom. For  the  seventeen  years  now  to 
elapse,  this  new  Hopkins  school  led  much  the  same  che- 
quered existence  as  its  unlucky  predecessors.  For  the  first 
nine  years  of  this  period,  Samuel  Street,  the  minister's  son 
and  a  Harvard  graduate,  was  in  charge.  Upon  his  resigna- 
tion in  1673  the  school  was  practically  closed,  not  having 
sufficient  public  support  again  to  afford  a  teacher.  The  impe- 
cunious George  Pardee  now  reascended  the  rostrum  and 
for  several  years,  to  the  few  boys  who  appeared  before  him, 


ii8  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

taught  Enghsh  grammar  and  as  much  of  Cheever's  Latin 
"Accidence"  as  he  himself  could  comprehend.  But  this  was 
again  but  little.  The  "college"  project  having  long  since 
entirely  dropped  out  of  sight,  the  New  Haven  grammar 
school,  which  John  Davenport  had  propped  up  so  many 
times  without  result,  again  seemed  tottering  on  its  last  legs. 

This  New  Haven  condition,  however,  had  its  counterpart 
throughout  the  new  Connecticut,  There  had  been  a  general 
educational  decline  during  this  period,  in  the  entire  Colony. 
So  serious  was  this,  in  its  important  relations  to  the  con- 
tinuing of  an  orthodox  ministry  for  the  churches,  that,  in 
1672,  the  legislature  acted  on  the  matter,  granting  each 
of  the  four  counties  public  lands  for  the  upkeep  of  their 
grammar  schools,  and  requiring  every  town  of  more 
than  one  hundred  families  to  maintain  one.  But  New 
Haven  still  lagged  behind  and  was  publicly  coniplained  of 
for  not  keeping  a  grammar  school  under  the  Colony  law. 
The  upshot  was  a  "loving  debate"  in  a  New  Haven  town 
meeting,  ending  in  an  appropriation  of  town  money  and  the 
hiring  of  another  schoolmaster.  By  1684  the  results  of  this 
final  action  seem  to  have  been  fairly  successful.  The  new 
Hopkins  Grammar  School  on  the  Market-place  was  estab- 
lished, and  was  now  admitting  the  New  Haven  boys 
free,  and  charging  outsiders  ten  shillings,  dividing  its 
scholars  into  "English"  and  "Latin"  groups,  teaching  the 
latter  what  was  required  by  Harvard  College  at  that  time, 
and  excluding  "all  Girls,  as  Improper  &  inconsistent  with 
such  a  Grammar  Schoole,  as  ye  law  Injoines  &  Is  ye  Deslgne 
of  this  Settlement."  The  Latin  required  at  this  period  was 
sufficient  to  understand  Cicero  and  to  recite  Latin  prose  and 
verse  from  memory;  in  Greek  the  boys  were  put  through 
the  elements  of  the  grammar  only. 

I  have  told  of  the  group  of  boys  who  went  up  to  Harvard 
during  Ezeklel   Cheever's  New   Haven   days,   and  of  the 


New  Haven  and  James  Pierpont  119 

hiatus  that  then  ensued,  owing  to  the  financial  disasters 
of  the  people.  A  perusal  of  the  antiquarian  records  of  Har- 
vard College  shows  how  few  were  the  Connecticut  matricu- 
lations up  to  1690.  During  this  period  only  some  thirty 
New  Haven  and  Connecticut  boys  were  graduated  among 
the  nearly  three  hundred  Harvard  graduates.  Roughly 
speaking,  New  Haven  had  sent  up  eleven  of  these,  Hart- 
ford eight,  Milford  and  the  present  Clinton  (then  Killing- 
worth)  two  each,  and  Guilford,  Branford,  Stratford, 
Middletown,  Windsor,  and  Wethersfield,  one  each.  No 
New  Haven  boy  went  up,  after  Cheever  had  left,  until 
Samuel  Street,  the  son  of  John  Davenport's  second  assistant 
minister,  who  received  his  degree  in  1664.  John  Harriman, 
to  be  graduated  two  years  later,  was  the  son  of  the  New 
Haven  innkeeper  (a  highly  honorable  calling  in  those 
hospitable  days),  and  he,  with  Abraham  Pierson  of  Bran- 
ford,  was  the  sole  New  Haven  college  product  of  the  canny 
Jeremiah  Peck.  Twelve  years  later  two  more  New  Haven 
youths  went  to  Harvard, — one  of  them  that  little  Noadiah 
Russell  who  was  to  be  one  of  the  founders  of  the  Collegiate 
School.  John  Davenport's  grandson,  later  to  return  to  Con- 
necticut and  to  take  a  forenjpst  place  in  these  pages,  was 
graduated  in  1687,  but  can  hardly  be  called  a  New  Haven 
school  product,  as  he  matriculated  from  Boston. 

The  older  Connecticut  Colony's  slower  rise  in  educational 
ambitions  has  been  noted  in  the  fact  that  no  Connecticut 
boys  went  to  Harvard  until  New  Haven's  first  flush  of 
energy  was  dying  out.  The  four  remaining  Hartford 
youths  went  up  at  various  intervals  later  on.  Of  the  men 
later  to  be  identified  with  the  Collegiate  School,  but  two  went 
to  Harvard  from  their  Connecticut  homes  after  1662: 
Nathaniel  Higginson,  the  son  of  the  colleague  of  Rev.  Mr. 
Whitfield,  of  Guilford,  who  was  graduated  in  1670,  and 
Timothy  Woodbridge,  of  Killingworth,  graduated  in  1675. 


I20  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

'  Of  these  thirty  or  so  Connecticut  graduates  of  Harvard 
before  1690,  twenty-three  became  ministers.  Nine  of 
these  latter  settled  about  Hartford,  and  one  went  to  Strat- 
ford, t)ne  to  Stamford,  and  one  to  Killingworth.  Three 
taught  in  the  New  Haven  school  for  brief  periods,  and  one 
became  a  magistrate  in  New  Haven.  Taken  as  a  whole, 
with  the  purpose  in  mind  of  the  New  Haven  and  Connecti- 
cut Colony  founders  to  provide  a  second  generation  of  edu- 
cated public  leaders  for  "church  and  commonwealth,"  this 
short  list  of  Harvard  graduates  from  the  two  Colonies  was 
but  another  phase  of  the  general  failure  of  the  original 
plans.  Not  only  had  church  and  school  development  been 
checked  at  home,  but  there  had  been  a  signal  decline  in  the 
colonists'  interest  in  sending  to  the  only  higher  educational 
institution  of  New  England  a  succession  of  youths  who 
could  be  relied  upon  to  return  to  their  communities  and  carry 
forward  the  primitive  faith  of  their  fathers.^  This  fact 
had  its  distinct  bearing  upon  the  situation  which  was  shortly 
to  force  upon  the  Connecticut  leaders, — particularly  those 
near  New  Haven, — a  realization  of  their  need  of  a  home 
institution. 

We  have  recalled  the  lapse  in  the  ministry  in  three  of  the 
original  New  Haven  Jurisdiction  churches.  New  Haven, 
Branford,  and  Milford.  In  New  Haven,  the  gentle- 
mannered  and  mild  Rev.  Nicholas  Street, — Oxford  gradu- 
ate and  assistant  to  John  Davenport  after  Hooke  had  de- 
parted to  Cromwell's  unstable  protection, — had  been  min- 

1  It  was  merely  another  indication  of  the  partial  failure  of  New  Eng- 
land's idealistic  church  and  educational  theory,  that  measures  had  to  be 
taken  early  to  keep  in  New  England  the  young  fellows  educated  at 
Harvard.  When  the  "College-corn"  contributions  were  falling  oflF,  the  New 
Haven  people  were  told  that  it  would  not  be  used  for  any  Harvard  scholars 
who  were  not  to  remain  in  the  country.  Harvard  itself  had  to  take  action 
on  the  matter  later,  as  the  number  of  young  graduates  removing  to  England 
had  become  a  serious  question. 


New  Haven  and  James  Pierpont  121 

ister  for  many  years.  But  the  Reverend  Street  was  pos- 
sessed of  no  special  qualifications  for  public  leadership  in 
the  declining  times  of  his  ministry,  his  church  had  slowly 
disintegrated,  and  he  had  been  succeeded  by  a  series  of 
temporary  preachers.  Matters  had  gone  from  bad  to 
worse,  and  the  church  people,  owing  to  their  division  over 
the  acceptance  of  the  "Half-way  Covenant"  in  their  mem- 
bership, were  divided  over  the  call  to  a  new  minister.  So 
low  had  Davenport's  great  scheme  fallen  that  the  town  now 
took,  over  the  unsteady  support  of  the  church  to  save  it  from 
entire  failure.  Its  independent  identity  gone  in  the  changed 
conditions  under  Connecticut,  its  school  and  church  nearly 
extinct,  its  business  in  a  state  of  general  collapse,  with  no 
leaders  like  the  old  ones,  with  such  as  there  were  now 
resident  in  adjacent  towns,  and  with  the  Royal  Governor 
Andros  parading  the  countryside  and  ordering  the  unseating 
of  the  Colony's  magistrates  In  the  name  of  a  Romanist 
King,  New  Haven's  original  dream  of  a  permanent  Puritan 
commonwealth  In  the  New  World  had  now  fallen  away 
like  a  house  of  cards. 

It  was  at  this  low  tide  in  New  Haven's  higher  fortunes 
that  a  new  personality  was  to  come  to  the  disheartened  com- 
munity, and, — exercising  that  spirit  of  leadership  during 
new  and  better  times  which  John  Davenport  himself  showed 
In  the  primitive  days, — bring  in  a  new  era,  in  which  we  shall 
find  ourselves  much  Interested. 

The  three  churches  at  Branford,  Milford,  and  New 
Haven,  now  called  to  their  pulpits  three  young  Harvard 
graduates.  Branford  called  the  Rev.  Samuel  Russel;  Mil- 
ford,  the  Rev.  Samuel  Andrew;  and  New  Haven,  the  Rev. 
James  Pierpont. 

II 

These  three  young  men  were  of  about  the  same  age  and 
all  were  Massachusetts-born.     Samuel  Andrew,  the  eldest 


122  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

of  them,  had  been  graduated  from  Harvard  in  1675,  and 
had  been  a  Fellow  there  under  President  Urian  Oakes,  and 
a  tutor.  At  Harvard  he  had  been  a  classmate  of  the  Rev. 
Timothy  Woodbridge,  who,  oddly  enough,  was  ordained  to 
preach  at  Hartford  on  the  same  day  in  1685  that  Andrew 
began  his  career  at  the  old  Prudden  church  in  Milford. 
Samuel  Russel  was  graduated  in  1681.  He  was  the  son  of 
that  minister  at  Hadley,  Massachusetts,  who  had  had  a 
large  share  in  diverting  to  Hadley  that  part  of  the  original 
Hopkins  gift  which  had  been  given  to  Connecticut  under 
the  Hopkins  will,  and  who  had  sheltered  the  Regicides  in 
his  parsonage.  The  younger  Russel  must  have  known  of 
the  secreting  of  Colonel  Goffe  in  his  father's  house  at 
Hadley,  and  imbibed  strong  anti-Royalist  sympathies 
thereby.  He  had  been  teaching  in  the  Hopkins  Grammar 
School  in  Hadley  when  he  was  called  to  the  elder  Pierson's 
vacant  pulpit  in  Branford.  James  Pierpont,  the  third  of 
this  group,  was  a  classmate  of  Russel's.^  He  was  a  Rox- 
bury  boy,  and,  since  leaving  Harvard  in  1681,  had  been 
awaiting  a  call  to  the  ministry. 

James  Pierpont  arrived  in  New  Haven  over  the  old 
Post-road  from  Boston  in  August,  1684.  Heralded  by  the 
church  committee  who  had  been  sent  to  look  him  over,  as 
"a  godly  man,  a  good  scholar,  a  man  of  good  parts,"  and 
"likely  to  make  a  good  instrument,"  he  had  been  recom- 
mended by  the  deacon  who  had  chosen  him  as  one  who 
would  "desire  peace  in  the  church  and  town  and  rejoice  to 
hear  of  it,  and  that  there  may  be  no  after-troubles."  To 
this  end  the  New  Haven  people  had  assembled  in  their 
homes  and  Meeting-house  for  a  day  of  fasting  and  prayer, 

1  The  Harvard  Class  of  1681  contained  four  men  who  were  to  have 
important  places  in  Yale's  early  history.  Besides  Samuel  Russel  and  James 
Pierpont,  a  third  member  of  this  Harvard  Class,  Noadiah  Russell,  was  to 
be  one  of  the  founders  of  the  Collegiate  School.  The  fourth  was  John 
Davie,  whose  financial  aid  to  the  enterprise  will  later  be  told. 


New  Haven  and  James  Pierpont  123 

"wherein  to  confess  their  sins  before  God,"  and  "beg 
pardon."  So  that  young  James  Pierpont,  now  twenty-nine 
years  old,  began  his  life  work  in  John  Davenport's  historic 
church  with  good  hopes  of  a  reawakened  town  giving  him 
more  support  than  it  had  given  his  itinerant  predecessors  in 
its  long-vacant  pulpit. 

I  suppose  that  this  young  newcomer  to  the  New  Haven 
Meeting-house  was  probably  not  the  equal  of  John  Daven- 
port in  purely  intellectual  endowments.  He  does  not  rank 
with  his  New  England  contemporaries  in  this  respect,  as 
Davenport  did  with  his.  But  one  sermon  of  Pierpont's  has 
come  down  to  us,  his  "Sundry  False  Hopes  of  Heaven,  dis- 
covered and  decried,"  preached  at  Cotton  Mather's  North 
Church  in  Boston  in  171 1  and  published  with  a  character- 
istically laudatory  preface  by  Mather.  Though  this  sermon 
falls  short  of  the  originality  and  intellectual  vigor  that 
mark  the  performances  of  Davenport,  "it  proves," — if 
we  may  rely  upon  Dr.  Leonard  Bacon's  dictum, — "that  its 
author's  eminence  was  not  accidental."  Yet  he  was 
unusually  endowed  in  other  ways.  He  was  the  possessor  of 
social  graces  and  a  force  of  character  that  were  to  make 
him  one  of  the  leaders  of  his  times  and  to  gain  him  a  success 
in  life  that  had  been  denied  Davenport.  Contemporary 
references  sufficiently  bear  this  out.  The  sprightly  diarist. 
Madam  Knight,  for  instance,  journeying  through  New 
Haven  in  1704,  wrote  him  down  as  "the  holy  Mr.  Pier- 
pont." He  was  "greatly  distinguished,"  says  Dr.  Bacon, 
"and  highly  honored  in  his  day."  In  that  preface  to  his 
Boston  sermon  which  Cotton  Mather  wrote,  he  said  that 
Pierpont  "has  been  a  rich  blessing  to  the  Church  of  God," 
and  added:  "New  Haven  values  him;  all  Connecticut  honors 
him.    They  have  cause  to  do  it." 

There  exists  a  contemporary  painting  of  James  Pierpont, 
done  at   Boston  in   171 1    "by  a   superior  English   artist," 


124  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

doubtless  when  Pierpont  was  preaching  of  a  week-end  to 
Cotton  Mather's  conservative  Boston  folk.  It  shows  a 
face  of  more  than  usual  sweetness  and  charm.  In  it  is  a 
certain  gentleness,  far  different  from  the  bold  austerity 
which  we  associate  with  the  long-faded  lineaments  of  his 
predecessor.  It  shows  James  Pierpont  with  his  long  curly 
hair  falling  over  his  shoulders,  instead  of  the  usual  wig  of 
his  day,  and  his  white  square  ministerial  band  on  his  chest. 
His  forehead  is  high  and  broad,  his  mouth  sensitive,  his 
large,  dark  eyes  contemplative  and  even  beautiful.  This 
old  painting  well  conveys  the  feeling  of  a  spiritual  leader 
and  a  well-born  gentleman. 

And  well-born  James  Pierpont  was.  His  grandfather, 
James  Pierrepont,  was  a  Puritan  refugee,  and  a  nephew 
through  a  younger  line  of  the  Sir  Henry  Pierrepont  from 
whom  sprang  the  Dukes  of  Kingston,  and  of  Sir  Henry's 
sister  who  married  Francis  Beaumont  the  playwright.  And 
he  was  interested  in  this  connection.  An  odd  story  might  be 
told^  of  the  long  effort  of  the  New  Haven  Pierponts,  living 
in  the  crude  little  Connecticut  village,  to  establish  a  right 
to  the  succession  to  the  Kingston  dukedom  in  the  event  of 
a  lapse  in  male  heirs  of  the  elder  branch.  This  effort  was 
mildly  begun  by  James  Pierpont  when  writing  to  Jeremiah 
Dummer,  the  London  agent,  in  171 1,  and  was  energetically 
continued  by  his  son.  The  story  tells  how  that  son  urged 
matters  with  much  enthusiasm,  and  how  he  was  finally  fore- 
stalled by  a  cousin  who,  not  content  with  merely  introduc- 
ing himself  by  letter,  went  over  to  England  in  person  and, 
calmly  assuming  the  New  Haven  Pierponts'  claim,  was 
received  with  amusement  by  His  Grace  and  had  a  more 
fortunate  experience  with  him  than  Thackeray's  Harry 
Warrington  had  with  his  relatives.     At  the  time  that  the 

1  Mr.  Henry  T.  Blake  has  an  entertaining  account  of  this  in  volume  VII 
of  the  New  Haven  Colony  Historical  Society  Papers. 


New  Haven  and  James  Pierpont  125 

Rev.  James  Pierpont  was  making  his  mild  beginnings  in 
this  sequence  of  events,  the  Earl  of  Kingston  was  that 
Evelyn  Pierrepont  who  had  married  a  cousin  of  Henry 
Fielding  and  whose  daughter,  Lady  Mary  Wortley  Mon- 
tagu, was  to  become  famous  as  the  author  of  one  of  the  most 
agreeable  volumes  of  tittle-tattle  of  the  times.  Lady  Mary 
tells  of  the  scandalous  costume  of  the  fair  Elizabeth  Chud- 
leigh  at  the  King's  fancy  ball.  She  is  said  to  have  been 
the  prototype  of  Thackeray's  "Beatrice  Esmond."  When 
the  kindly  New  Haven  minister  was  unsuccessfully  trying 
to  find  some  way  in  which  his  branch  of  the  Pierrepont 
family  might  be  brought  to  the  attention  of  Evelyn  Pierre- 
pont, Duke  of  Kingston,  that  gracious  noble,  in  peruke  and 
sword,  was  dangling  at  the  embroidered  petticoats  of  Miss 
Chudleigh,  and  giving  no  small  amount  of  piquancy  to  the 
gossip  of  London  and  the  Court  thereby. 

Ill 

But  all  of  this  fashionable  world  of  over  the  seas  was 
far  removed  from  the  provincial  life  of  such  a  New  Eng- 
land minister  as  James  Pierpont.  A  far  more  serious 
business  lay  before  him  than  this  Vanity  Fair  of  William 
and  Mary's  Court,  as  he  found  himself  commencing  his 
career  in  John  Davenport's  old  pulpit  in  New  Haven.  He 
had  work  to  do. 

We  may  please  ourselves  with  the  picture  of  this  young 
Harvard  graduate,  as  he  enters  on  that  long  life  in  New 
Haven  during  which  he  was  to  prove  of  such  usefulness  to 
his  people  and  to  the  generations  which  followed  him. 

He  comes  by  horseback  over  the  King's  Highway,  this 
energetic  young  Congregational  clergyman,  accompanied 
by  a  man  sent  over  New  London  way  to  meet  him  on  his 
journey.  He  is  doubtless  met  at  the  Neck  by  the  sedately- 
garbed  deacons  of  the  church,  and  brought  to  town  over  the 


New  Haven  and  James  Pierpont  127 

old  College  Oystershell-fields,  to  enter  the  outskirts  of  the 
New  Haven  village  of  1684  about  where  Olive  Street  now 
is.  The  widow  of  John  Davenport's  only  son  was  now 
living  in  the  ancestral  Davenport  homestead  on  lower  Elm 
Street,  with  her  daughter  Abigail,  then  twelve  years  old, — 
her  son  John  then  being  in  his  Sophomore  year  at  Harvard. 
To  this  house,  so  full  of  memories  of  the  first  John  Daven- 
port, the  youthful  James  Pierpont  is  doubtless  escorted 
through  the  shady  lanes  of  the  village,  bowed  to  reverently 
by  the  men  (and  observed  as  cannily) ,  and  peeked  at  through 
the  casement  windows  of  the  village  houses  by  maids  and 
maidens  to  whom  the  coming  of  so  noble  a  bachelor  divine 
was  an  event  of  no  little  romance  and  importance.  Here, 
in  the  library  looking  down  over  the  fields  and  orchards  to 
the  harbor,  where  old  John  Davenport  had  ruled  his  theoc- 
racy for  twenty-odd  years,  the  young  Pierpont  settles  down 
to  take  his  place  in  a  new  generation  and  carry  forward  the 
church. 

And  I  fancy  that  we  may  properly  enough  find  in  this 
accidental  circumstance  a  double  inspiration  for  the  young 
Harvard  minister.  Coming  from  the  increasingly  liberal 
Massachusetts  of  his  recent  years  at  Harvard,  young  Pier- 
pont agreeably  found  himself  in  the  midst  of  a  New  Eng- 
land church  life  of  the  primitive  type.  To  many  of  his 
congregation,  this  life  was  still  of  the  old  Davenport 
pattern,  in  spite  of  the  Connecticut  absorption,  and,  for  his 
first  year,  he  was  to  be  the  guest  of  a  daughter  of  the  elder 
Pierson  and  daughter-in-law  of  old  John  Davenport.  It 
was  this  early  sympathetic  touch  with  the  older  New  Haven 
that  was  largely  responsible,  I  fancy,  for  the  immediate 
success  which  James  Pierpont  had  in  bridging  over  the  gap 
to  the  new  generation  of  which  he  was  now  the  leader. 

During  this  first  year  of  James  Pierpont's  life  in  New 
Haven,  the  church  people  were  building  a  new  parsonage 


128  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

for  him,  on  the  Eldred  lot  on  Elm  Street.  The  new  minis- 
ter had  come  with  few  personal  belongings,  so  the  villagers 
furnished  the  parsonage  for  him,  one  man  bringing,  as  his 
best  gift,  two  elm  saplings  which  he  planted  before  the 
house  door.  These  elms  became  in  time  an  historic  land- 
mark in  New  Haven.  Under  their  broad  canopy,  forty-odd 
years  later,  Jonathan  Edwards  was  to  woo  James  Pierpont's 
daughter.  Under  them,  in  twenty  years  more,  Whitefield 
was  to  stir  up  the  religious  emotions  of  the  townspeople  in 
the  Great  Awakening.  They  were  to  see  the  little  troop  of 
New  Haven  militiamen  march  off  with  Benedict  Arnold 
to  fight  the  British  at  Cambridge,  and,  come  the  turn  of 
life's  wheel,  see  the  effigy  of  that  debonair  militia  captain 
hooted  through  the  village  streets  after  his  apostasy  to  the 
British.  They  were  to  see  the  British  troops  in  1779 
parade  noisily  into  the  quiet  town  and  bivouac  on  the  Green. 
One  of  these  trees  was  said  to  be  standing  as  late  as  1840, 
"the  tallest  and  most  venerable  of  all  the  trees  in  this  city 
of  elms  and  ever  the  first  to  be  tinged  with  green  at  the 
return  of  spring." 

IV 

The  Puritan  village  in  which  James  Pierpont  thus  began 
his  career  of  thirty  full  years  was  still  more  or  less  in  its 
original  condition.  It  had  been  repalisaded  against  the 
threatening  troubles  of  King  Philip's  War  but  a  decade 
before,  and  a  few  of  the  great  gates  that  had  then  been 
erected  at  the  street  ends  of  the  outer  square  were  no  doubt 
still  in  use,  if  only  to  keep  in  the  cattle.  The  Market-place 
was  still  much  as  it  had  been  in  John  Davenport's  day, 
though  there  were  fewer  trees  and  more  tree-stumps.  The 
causeway  that  Davenport  and  Governor  Eaton  had  used  to 
cross  the  alder  swamp  was  now  gone,  and  a  new  and  larger 
wooden  Meeting-house  had  been  built  in  the  middle  of  the 


New  Haven  and  James  Pierpont  129 

Market-place,  a  little  southwest  of  the  first  one.  The 
watch-house  and  the  stocks  still  stood  on  the  College  Street 
side,  though  perhaps  less  used  than  formerly.  The  original 
log  schoolhouse  of  Ezekiel  Cheever  and  John  Bowers  was 
still  in  use,  though  now,  somewhat  enlarged,  the  Hopkins 
Colony  Grammar  School.  A  few  improvements  had  come 
in  with  the  absorption  with  Connecticut,  and  the  town  was 
not,  in  many  ways,  as  provincial  as  it  had  been  a  few  decades 
before.  Yet  the  people  lived  under  very  much  the  same 
social  conditions  as  in  1650.  The  ancient  town  watch  had 
passed  out  as  a  standing  police  force,  as  had  the  town 
drummer,  whose  merry  business  it  had  been  for  twoscore 
years  to  beat  the  town  drum  at  sunset  and  for  half  an  hour 
before  sunrise,  and  twice  on  Sabbath  days.  The  long  roll 
of  the  too-lively  Bassett's  drum  had  been  superseded  in 
1 68 1  by  the  jingling  echoes  of  a  church  bell  that  had  been 
purchased  after  much  wagging  of  heads  from  a  tramp 
skipper  anchored  in  the  harbor.  One  Joseph  Pardee,  son 
of  the  impecunious  schoolmaster,  was  the  bell  ringer  when 
Pierpont  arrived,  and,  except  for  one  short  period  when  the 
bell  was  sent  to  England  for  repairs,  was  to  make  its  music 
float  out  over  the  village  tree-tops  on  Sabbath  days  and  for 
curfew  at  nine  o'clock  each  night  while  Pierpont  was  the 
minister.  With  all  these  changes,  the  Town  Crier  had  be- 
come an  institution,  and,  as  occasion  called,  paraded  the 
sandy  footpaths  along  the  village  streets,  calling  out  lost 
cattle  and  strayed  children,  notices  of  sales  and  public  meet- 
ings, and  such  great  news  as  might  come  in  by  travelers  or 
in  letters  from  abroad. 

Nor  had  the  character  of  the  New  Haven  people,  or  their 
manners  and  affairs,  changed  much  since  John  Davenport 
had  left  them.  All  of  the  original  commercial  promise  of 
the  settlement  had  long  since  disappeared,  and,  while  there 
was  a  little  trading  by  the  Sound,  especially  to  Boston,  the 


130  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

people  had  but  little  to  do  except  to  plant  the  fields,  trap  for 
furs,  and  attend  to  the  manifold  handicraft  occupations  of 
every  small  community.  Except  in  their  dress,  the  people 
of  James  Pierpont's  New  Haven  had  not  progressed  very 
far  beyond  John  Davenport's.  The  great  change  in  this 
respect  that  the  arrival  of  the  retinues  and  hangers-on  of 
the  Royal  Governors  had  made  in  New  York  and  Boston, 
had  not  at  this  date  permeated  to  New  Haven.  So  that  the 
magnificent  wardrobes  of  some  of  the  Boston  English-i-fied 
dandies  of  the  day  were  hardly  paralleled  here.  No  such 
ornamental  persons  paraded  the  village  streets  of  New 
Haven  In  1685  as  were  not  infrequent  sights  in  the  Boston 
lanes  of  the  day.  These  gentry,  so  the  old  inventories  and 
diaries  tell  us,  wore  such  splendid  garments  as  "satin 
coates"  embroidered  with  gold  flowers,  and  blue  breeches, 
or  scarlet  coats  and  breeches,  and  "damask  small  clothes." 
Yet  the  New  Haveners  of  that  day  were  not  too  provlnclally 
attired.  Wigs,  of  course  (those  "horrid  bushes  of 
vanity"),  were  now  common  elsewhere  in  New  England, — 
even  servants  and  soldiers,  and  sometimes  children,  wearing 
them.  Doubtless  many  New  Haven  burghers  wore  them 
under  their  now  lower  If  still  broad-brimmed  black  beaver 
and  castor  hats.  Perhaps  some  of  the  better  class  of  men 
in  Pierpont's  congregation  (like  the  New  London  gentry 
of  their  acquaintance)  wore  broadcloth  coats  with  red 
linings,  and  white  serge  coats,  cut  square  after  Charles  IPs 
Royal  dictum.  They  all  still  wore  the  great  capes  of  the 
early  days,  though  the  old  Elizabethan  doublets  had  long 
disappeared  for  jerkins  and  coats.  Here  and  there  some 
wealthy  citizen  might  have  a  bit  of  lace  at  his  shirt  front 
or  wristband.  Everybody,  however,  wore  gloves  from 
England,  men  and  women  alike  wore  muffs  and  rings  and 
riding  masks,  and  the  women  sun-masks  of  divers  colors. 
The  Town  Crier  no  doubt  frequently  called  articles  of  this 


132  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

sort  up  and  down  the  village  streets,  when  some  messenger 
arrived  from  Boston  with  the  latest  fashions  in  that  dress 
which,  in  spite  of  all  Puritan  qualms  and  regulations,  per- 
sisted in  being  of  the  keenest  interest  to  all  New  England 
provincials. 

It  may  well  have  been  the  Town  Crier  who,  two  years 
after  James  Pierpont  had  settled  in  his  new  house  facing  the 
Market-place,  gave  first  notice  of  the  approaching  visit  of 
the  Royalist  Governor,  Sir  Edmund  Andros.  This  Colonial 
officer,  tradition  has  it,  had  arrived  in  New  Haven  fresh 
from  his  unlucky  rebuff  before  the  General  Assembly  at 
Hartford,  where  the  Colony  charter  had  been  hidden  in 
reply  to  his  Excellency's  demand  for  it.  His  visit,  there- 
fore, was  something  of  a  test  of  the  stuff  of  which  the  young 
New  Haven  clergyman  was  made,  as  it  also  furnished  a 
proof  of  how  far  he  had  come,  in  his  few  years  out  of 
Harvard,  into  the  independent  political  attitude  of  his  New 
Haven  congregation.  Under  the  circumstances,  it  is  a  fair 
guess  that  the  Royal  officer  stopped  at  John  Harriman's 
tavern  instead  of  at  the  minister's  house.  It  was  of  a  Sun- 
day, and  the  spirit  of  John  Davenport  that  was  in  James 
Pierpont  rose  to  the  occasion  (if  the  story  of  that  day  can 
be  believed,  as  I  hope  it  may) .  Andros  and  his  retinue 
walked  across  the  Market-place  to  the  Meeting-house, 
where  all  of  the  townspeople  who  could  manage  it  were 
on  hand.  But  though  in  Royalist  New  Jersey  or  New  York 
the  occasion  might  well  have  been  one  of  special  services, 
young  Pierpont,  facing  the  Royal  officer's  party  over  the 
heads  of  his  stalwart  deacons,  conducted  the  services  with  as 
little  consideration  of  the  rank  of  his  new  auditors  or  to 
their  feelings  as  John  Davenport  himself  had  tendered  to 
that  visiting  Royalist  predecessor  who  had  listened  to  his 
belligerent  sermon  on  hiding  the  Regicides.  The  young 
Harvard   minister   selected   for   the   hymn, — so   the   story 


New  Haven  and  James  Pierpont 


133 


goes, — reading  from  his  high  pulpit  each  line  before  it  was 
sung,  as  was  the  custom  in  those  days,  that  vigorous  hymn 
of  independence  of  the  old  Puritan  churches,  which  began 

Why  dost  thou  tyrant  boast  abroad 
Thy  wicked  words  to  praise, 

and  which  ended,  undoubtedly  to  the  keen  relish  of  Pier- 
pont's  black-cloaked  congregation,  if  to  the  astonished  anger 
of  the  scarlet-resplendent  Andros  in  the  chief  pew  below, 

Thou  dost  delight  in  fraud  and  guile 

In  mischief,  blood  and  wrong. 
Thy  lips  have  learned  the  flatt'ring  style 

O,  false  deceitful  tongue! 

Under  a  young  minister  who  could  be  as  bold  as  this  in 
those  trying  times,  the  New  Haven  church  again  prospered. 
A  dozen  years  slipped  by,  quiet  years  for  the  minister  and 
his  provincial  little  flock.  During  them  Pierpont  wooed  and 
won  the  fair  daughter  of  the  widow  Davenport  and  busily 
attended  to  his  congregation's  souls,  until  a  question  arose 
which  was,  in  the  outcome,  to  be  a  most  important  one  for 
the  Colony. 


dames  SBierpont'^ 


J^i^fe 


CHAPTER  III 
THE  NEED  OF  A  COLONY  COLLEGE 

I 

HIS  question  was  the  old  one  of  a 
college  for  New  Haven.  As  to  just 
when  the  renewal  of  this  old  ambition 
of  John  Davenport's  was  made,  or 
who  made  it,  the  old-time  records  are 
silent.  It  is  not  until  about  the  years 
1 700-1 701  that  we  find  any  documents 
relating  to  the  plan,  and  it  is  not  until 
that  time  that  we  find  any  of  the  Colony  leaders  becoming 
publicly  active  in  its  behalf.  Yet,  without  doubt,  the 
reemergence  of  the  old  New  Haven  college  project  during 
or  just  before  1700  was  not  as  sudden  as  it  may  seem.  It 
was  the  logical  conclusion  of  a  general  situation,  largely 
theological,  that  had  been  forming  during  the  years  just 
after  1692. 


The  Need  of  a  Colony  College  135 

It  would  take  a  theologian  to  understand  all  of  the  com- 
plications of  that  period  of  Puritan  religious  decline;  yet 
the  general  outlines  of  things  are  clear  enough.  I  have 
referred  to  the  efforts  to  work  out  a  new  state-and-church 
system  in  the  face  of  a  growing  town  independence  in  Con- 
necticut in  the  first  few  years  after  the  new  charter.  If  we 
add  to  this  difficulty  the  further  complication  that  the 
churches  themselves  rather  generally  seem  to  have  held  to 
the  original  ideal  of  subservience  to  no  earthly  master,  and 
yet  were  declining  in  power  and  being  taken  over  by  the 
towns,  we  may  understand  a  little  of  the  situation.  The 
Hartford  church  split,  ending  in  the  settlement  of  Hadley, 
had  been  one  result  of  this.  There  were  other  similar  divi- 
sions elsewhere,  as  at  Wethersfield  and  Windsor,  and  in 
1650  the  Assembly  had  to  forbid  the  formation  of  new 
churches  without  the  consent  of  the  Court  and  of  neighbor- 
ing churches. 

And  another  factor  was  entering  into  this  church  situa- 
tion. About  1680  it  was  reported  to  England,  in  reply  to 
an  official  query,  that  the  "people,  in  this  colony,  are  some 
of  them  strict  congregational  men,  others  more  large  con- 
gregational men,  and  some  moderate  presbyterians.  The 
congregational  men  of  both  sorts  are  the  greatest  part  of 
the  people  in  the  colony."  The  entrance  of  this  "moderate 
presbyterian"  idea  had  become  a  considerable  factor  in 
Connecticut  ecclesiastical  matters  by  the  time  James  Pier- 
pont  arrived  in  New  Haven,  as  it  had  in  Massachusetts. 
While  the  time  was  not  then  ripe  for  the  advanced  step  to 
be  taken  at  the  Saybrook  Synod  in  1708,  and  the  formation 
of  the  modified  Presbyterian  form  of  church  organization 
which  was  then  adopted,  the  period  of  fifteen  years  before 
the  year  1700  saw  this  question  widely  agitated,  and  the 
controversy  over  it  becoming  one  of  the  principal  public 
matters  of  the  day.     I  do  not  think  that  we  can  pore  over 


136  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

the  old  records  of  church  and  Colony  affairs  during  this 
period  without  coming  to  the  conclusion  that  this  growing 
demand  for  some  sort  of  church  union  to  take  the  place  of 
the  complete  independence  of  the  early  churches,  was  one  of 
the  principal  factors  in  that  demand  which,  in  1700,  was  to 
come  for  a  Colony  college.  The  commonwealth  had  found 
itself  possessed  in  the  Winthrop  charter  of  centralized 
authority  over  its  independent  towns ;  the  churches  were  now 
groping  toward  a  "consociation"  which  would  bring  about  a 
somewhat  similar,  though  much  looser,  central  or  at  least 
common  authority  over  church  affairs;  as  a  bulwark  of  this 
latter  development,  there  were  to  be  those  who  favored  a 
college,  under  the  associated-church  control,  which  should 
furnish  the  churches  with  their  ministers. 

The  need  of  these  orthodox  religious  leaders,  as  we  have 
seen,  had  from  the  first  been  a  serious  problem.  After  the 
year  1692,  when  the  inhabitants  of  the  Colony  had  increased 
very  considerably,  and  when  many  new  towns  and  churches 
had  been  established,  this  need  became  acute.  As  the  ven- 
erable historian,  Trumbull,  says:  "the  calls  for  a  learned 
ministry,  to  supply  the  churches,  became  more  and  more 
urgent,"  and,  in  consequence,  "a  number  of  the  ministers 
conceived  the  purpose  of  founding  a  college  in  Connecticut. 
By  this  means,  they  might  educate  young  men,  from  among 
themselves,  for  the  sacred  ministry,  and  for  various  depart- 
ments in  civil  life,  and  diffuse  literature  and  piety  more 
generally  among  the  people." 

But  another,  and,  broadly  speaking,  even  more  important, 
situation  had  been  developing.  This  was  Connecticut's  rela- 
tion to  Harvard  itself,  and  to  Massachusetts.  We  have 
seen  how  President  Dunster's  Harvard  troubles  had  started 
a  New  Haven  college  agitation  in  Davenport's  day.  Pi-esi- 
dent  Mather's  difficulties  were  now  leading  to  a  renewed 
interest  in  that  situation.     This,  taken  together  with  the 


The  Need  of  a  Colony  College  137 

growing  demand  for  a  church  organization  at  home,  fur- 
nishes us  with  the  main  background  for  the  talk  that  now 
began  again  among  the  Connecticut  ministers  for  a  college 
of  their  own. 

A  letter  written  in  1723  by  the  Rev.  Moses  Noyes,  of 
Lyme,  one  of  the  founders  of  the  Collegiate  School,  is  to 
the  effect  that  "The  first  movers  for  a  college  in  Connecticut 
alleged  this  as  a  reason,  because  the  college  at  Cambridge 
was  under  the  tutorage  of  latitudinarlans."  Another  letter 
of  that  later  time,  from  two  other  trustees,  has  it  that  "our 
fountain"  was  "hoped  to  have  been  and  continued  the 
repository  of  truth  and  the  reserve  of  pure  and  sound  prin- 
ciples, doctrine,  and  education,  in  case  of  a  change  in  our 
mother  Harvard."  It  is  doubtless  true  that,  in  a  surface 
analysis,  local  conditions,  and  the  demand  therefrom  result- 
ing for  a  Connecticut  college  to  uphold  the  Connecticut 
churches,  were  to  be  the  chief  reasons  for  the  founding  of 
the  Collegiate  School.  There  can  be  no  serious  question, 
however,  that  these  references  to  the  Harvard  of  the  last 
years  of  the  17th  Century  point  to  a  second  and  perhaps 
even  more  important  factor  in  that  demand.  Just  what  that 
situation  was,  it  is  therefore  necessary  to  outline. 

II 

The  breakdown  of  the  original  Puritan  theocracy  in 
Massachusetts  with  the  charter  of  1692,  and  the  rise  of  a 
new  political  and  religious  faction  under  it,  as  evidenced  in 
such  a  case  as  the  formation  of  the  new  Brattle  church,  had 
placed  the  supporters  of  the  old  regime  in  that  Colony  In 
a  precarious  position.  After  that  year,  old  Increase 
Mather,  the  spiritual  head  of  the  conservative  party  (which 
contained  such  men  as  Stoughton,  and  Judge  Sewall,  and 
Secretary  Addington),  had  found  himself  rapidly  losing  his 


The  Need  of  a  Colony  College  139 

former  hold  on  public  affairs  and  on  the  theological  opinions 
of  his  people.  Shut  out  from  his  erstwhile  public  influence 
and  facing  a  new  church  movement,  it  was  therefore  with 
very  good  reason  that  Increase  Mather  began  to  look,  after 
1692,  upon  Harvard  College  as  the  last  remaining  sphere 
In  which  he  and  his  fellow  conservatives  could  maintain  their 
former  grip  on  political  affairs  and  preserve  the  threatened 
purity  of  the  Calvinlstic  theology  which  they  and  their 
forefathers  had  preached. 

Yet  even  here,  the  new  Massachusetts  political  situation 
was  having  its  serious  results.  The  annulment  of  the  Massa- 
chusetts charter  by  Charles  II  had  carried  with  it  the  loss 
of  the  Harvard  charter,  originally  given  to  It  by  the  Colony 
Court.  So  it  had  to  have  a  new  one,  and  that  new  one  had 
to  be  brought  into  line  with  the  new  public  conditions  in 
Massachusetts  and  accepted  by  the  English  Crown.  The 
new  relation  to  England  had  brought  about  the  first  steps 
In  what  was  to  prove  a  radical  change  In  the  character  and 
manners  and  church  interests  of  the  Boston  people.  A 
miniature  Royal  court  had  been  set  up  In  Puritan  Boston 
by  the  English  Governors,  the  imported  riffraff  of  which 
brought  over  English  Ideas  and  customs  and  extravagance 
of  dress.  Massachusetts  was  becoming  Londonized  In  Its 
scale  of  living,  and  losing  Its  old  austerity  and  religious 
seriousness.  Nor  was  this  all.  New  theological  views  came 
over  with  the  Royal  Governors  and  Church  of  England 
communicants.  A  new  Congregationalism,  much  more 
liberal  and  far  less  open  to  hypocrisies  for  political  ends 
than  the  old,  was  developing  in  Boston  as  an  offshoot  of 
the  Latitudinarian  movement  in  London.  Its  adherents 
both  in  and  out  of  the  College  circles  desired  a  share  In  the 
government  of  Harvard  and  proposed  to  get  it.  To  Presi- 
dent Mather  and  his  son  Cotton,  this  situation  was  the  signal 
for  a  determined  effort  to  preserve  this  last  stronghold  of 


140  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

the  old  faith  and  manners,  if  not  their  last  chance  to  regain 
something  of  their  own  fast-dwindling  prestige. 

And  so  we  see  a  battle  royal, — the  last  stand  of  the  old 
Puritan  guard  against  the  incoming  new  times, — beginning 
by  1692  in  that  Harvard  from  which  the  Connecticut  minis- 
ters were  still  hoping  to  receive  their  new  generations  of 
preachers  of  the  older  church.  The  chronicles  of  this  seven- 
year  war  are  lighted  up  by  highly  entertaining  episodes  for 
us  of  today,  serious  enough  as  they  were  to  the  participants 
in  them.  Old  Increase  Mather,  intent  on  fortifying  this  last 
refuge  for  himself  and  the  traditional  church,  made  five 
separate  onslaughts  on  the  General  Court  to  secure  a  new 
Harvard  charter  which  should  give  him  what  he  wanted. 
His  complete  failure  spelled  the  last  stand  of  the  old  party. 
For,  from  his  first  effort  for  such  a  charter  to  his  last,  the 
old  Puritan  fighter  was  meeting  increasingly  heavy  odds. 
And  he  must  have  seen  the  handwriting  on  the  wall  from 
the  first  Harvard  charter  which  he  drew  up  and  somehow 
or  other  passed  through  the  General  Court  and  put  into 
effect  before  it  had  been  received  for  acceptance  by  the 
English  Crown.  In  that  charter  he  had  named  a  perpetual 
body  of  Harvard  trustees  from  among  his  friends,  including 
his  son,  and  this  corporation  had  immediately  given  him 
the  honorary  degree  of  Doctor  of  Divinity,  the  first  to  be 
granted  in  this  country.  President  Mather,  however,  had 
proceeded  without  waiting  for  the  signing  of  this  new 
charter  by  the  King,  so  that  the  sudden  arrival  of  William's 
veto  of  it  must  have  been  extremely  embarrassing  to  him,  as 
well  as  a  source  of  keen  amusement  to  that  large  body  of 
Boston  citizens  who,  under  the  new  charter,  were  against 
him.  Other  attempts  at  a  new  charter  falling.  President 
Mather,  in  1697,  rose  to  his  last  effort.  In  this  he  inserted 
a  religious-qualification  clause,  which  harked  back,  of  course, 
to  the  Mather  Congregationalism  and  the  Cambridge  Plat- 


The  Need  of  a  Colony  College  141 

form  for  its  theology.  Passed  by  the  General  Court,  it  was 
as  promptly  vetoed  by  the  newly-arrived  English  Gov- 
ernor, Bellamont,  and  the  end  was  in  sight  of  the  Mather 
effort  to  keep  the  broadening  Harvard  in  the  traditional 
Puritan  church  fold. 

Ill 

By  the  year  1699,  therefore,  we  can  see  that  Harvard 
College  was  fast  shpping  into  the  control  of  the  reform 
party  in  the  church  and  Colony,  a  party  that  proposed  to 
have  the  suffrage  broadened  so  as  to  include  all  members 
of  the  churches,  and  to  admit  Church  of  England  members 
to  it  as  well,  and  that,  theologically,  proposed  to  reform 
New  England  religious  thinking  along  new  and,  for  the 
time,  advanced  and  even  heretical  lines.  The  Mathers, 
and  such  members  of  their  circle  as  were  still  in  public  life, 
were  now  all  but  defeated.  A  new  generation  was  coming 
upon  the  scene  in  Massachusetts  that  was  more  inclined  to  be 
at  peace  with  the  Crown  than  the  sturdy  old  original 
settlers  ever  had  been  willing  to  be.  And,  so  far  as  Presi- 
dent Mather's  relations  to  Harvard  were  concerned,  there, 
also,  he  was  losing  ground.  An  important  factor,  personal 
with  President  Mather,  had  contributed  to  this  later  situa- 
tion. In  spite  of  repeated  urgings  and  indeed  several  orders 
by  the  General  Court,  the  elder  Mather  had  peremptorily 
declined  to  resign  his  Boston  church  and  remove  to  Cam- 
bridge and  there  be  in  residence  as  the  College  head.  In  his 
long  absences  across  the  river  in  Boston,  the  College  affairs 
had  been  in  the  hands  of  two  young  tutors, — John  Leverett, 
later  to  become  President  of  Harvard,  and  William  Brattle, 
classmates  at  Harvard  in  1680,  and  one  year  senior  there  to 
James  Pierpont  and  Samuel  Russel.  Both,  as  it  happened, 
were  recruits  to  the  new  church  that  was  starting  in  Boston, 
and  both   were  hostile   to   all   of  the   ceremonials   of   the 


142  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

traditional  theology  and  church  government.  Brattle  had 
become  the  local  minister  in  Cambridge  during  this  period, 
and  was  there  introducing  the  new  Congregationalism. 
Both  he  and  Leverett  were  excluded  from  the  College  in 
the  proposed  charter  of  1697,  and  both  left  it  at  that  time, 
ta  throw  themselves  into  the  new  theological  movement  and 
to  help  start  Coleman's  new  Boston  church. 

We  may  well  surmise,  therefore,  that  by  the  year  1699, 
not  only  were  political  conditions  In  the  old  Massachusetts 
Colony  such  as  to  cause  fear  that,  unless  the  tide  were 
stemmed,  the  days  of  the  traditional  Puritan  church  in  New 
England  were  numbered,  but  the  religious-reform  movement 
threatened  to  sap  the  traditional  orthodoxy  of  Harvard 
itself  and  result  in  sending  a  new  sort  of  minister  into  the 
churches,  tinctured  with  the  Latltudinarianism  of  the  new 
religious  faction.  There  can  hardly  be  doubt  that  this  con- 
dition, coming  to  a  serious  climax  In  President  Mather's 
final  failure  to  force  Harvard  into  his  own  mould,  was  a 
cause  for  very  great  Interest  and  solicitude  In  far-away  Con- 
necticut, and  that  some  of  the  Connecticut  leaders  were  now 
giving  it  prolonged  and  prayerful  thought.  Increase 
Mather's  resignation  in  October,  1700,  and  his  enforced 
withdrawal  about  a  year  later,  were  but  the  after-events  of 
a  situation  that,  by  1698  or  1699,  must  have  brought  the 
proposed  Connecticut  college  project  to  the  forefront  of 
public  discussion  In  the  younger  colony. 

So,  while  we  now  have  no  means  of  knowing  the  precise 
time  when  this  project  actively  came  up,  I  imagine  that 
we  shall  be  well  within  the  truth  if  we  consider  it  to  have 
been  somewhere  between  the  years  1697  and  1700.  Kings- 
ley,  in  his  "Yale  College,"  suggests  that  it  could  not  have 
been  long  after  James  Pierpont  arrived  In  New  Haven  in 
1685,  and  that  its  postponement  at  that  time  may  have  re- 
sulted from  the  upset  public  conditions  that  followed,  in  New 


The  Need  of  a  Colony  College  143 

England,  upon  the  long  war  between  England  and  France 
which  closed  with  the  Peace  of  Ryswick.  in  1697.  However 
that  may  be  (and  it  is  interesting  to  recall  it)  there  could 
hardly  have  been  much  public  support  for  such  a  new  and, 
at  the  least,  expensive  enterprise  as  the  establishment  of  a 
Connecticut  college  during  these  ruinous  years.  Connecti- 
cut, to  be  sure,  was  protected  from  French  and  Indian 
attacks  from  the  north  by  her  situation  below  Massachu- 
setts; but  her  military  and  financial  help  was  possible  and 
was  called  upon.  Captain  Bull  had  been  sent  from  Hart- 
ford with  soldiers  into  New  York.  Throughout  the  French 
and  Indian  War,  Connecticut  contributed  troops  and  money 
to  the  English  Colonies'  joint  cause,  spending  upwards  of 
£12,000  to  this  purpose,  and  even  then  got  into  such  diffi- 
culties with  a  scheming  New  York  Royal  Governor  that  an 
agent  had  to  be  sent  to  England,  at  still  further  expense,  to 
secure  protection.  But  with  the  end  of  the  war  between 
William  III  and  Louis  XIV  of  France,  there  was  a  short 
lull  until  Queen  Anne's  War  broke  out  in  1702,  and  the 
same  struggle  of  Connecticut  to  keep  from  being  annexed  to 
New  York  began  over  again.  It  was  no  doubt  during  this 
brief  respite  from  public  relations  with  the  neighboring 
Colony,  and  when  Connecticut's  church-organization  ques- 
tion and  Harvard's  internal  affairs  were  reaching  the  points 
described  above,  that  the  Connecticut  college  scheme  was 
again  seriously  broached. 

IV 

The  exact  sequence  in  the  events  that  now  occurred,  as 
well  as  the  precise  nature  of  some  of  those  events,  we  do 
not  now  know.  Contemporaneous  records  of  the  founding 
of  Yale  are  extremely  meager;  nor  was  much  added  later, — 
by  actors  in  this  first  scene  in  Yale  history,  or  by  historians 


144  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

of  the  next  generation, — which  can  be  said  to  make  every 
feature  of  the  episode  wholly  understandable.  The  ques- 
tion is  still  an  open  one,  when  and  where  the  Collegiate 
School  was  actually  "founded";  it  is  not  precisely  known 
what  the  relation  to  the  project  was,  at  its  start,  of  a  number 
of  Colony  leaders  who  afterwards  became  closely  identified 
with  it.  I  have  attempted,  in  the  following  pages,  however, 
to  piece  together  what  we  do  know  about  these  rather  inter- 
esting matters,  and  to  present  the  facts  so  that  we  may  at 
least  have  a  realization  of  such  of  them  as  we  may  accept. 

We  have  President  Thomas  Clap's  authority^  for  the 
statement  that  "The  Design  of  founding  a  College  in  the 
Colony  of  Connecticut  was  first  concerted  by  the  Ministers; 
among  which  the  Rev.  Mr.  Pierpont  of  New  Haven,  Mr. 
Andrew  of  Milford,  and  Mr.  Russel  of  Branford,  were  the 
most  forward  and  active." 

Of  these  three  young  men,  James  Pierpont  has  been  given 
the  leadership  by  all  the  chroniclers  of  Yale's  beginnings, 
and  with  good  reason.  We  have  seen  the  kind  of  a  man 
he  was,  and  the  influence  that  he  wielded  among  his  fellow 
ministers.  He  had  become  the  owner  of  the  books  that 
John  Davenport  had  been  accumulating  for  a  New  Haven 
"college"  library,  and  had  thus  become  heir,  in  a  sense,  to 
the  long- forgotten  educational  enterprise.  And  Pierpont 
had  formed,  early  in  his  life  at  New  Haven,  still  another 
connection  with  Davenport.  During  those  first  years,  as  we 
have  seen,  he  had  been  a  sentimental  traveler  down  the 
shaded  Elm  Street  footpath  to  the  widow  Davenport's 
house,  where  his  famous  predecessor  had  lived  his  long  New 
Haven  life,  and  there  had  been  married  to  the  youthful 
Abigail  (granddaughter  of  John  Davenport  and  the  elder 
Abraham  Pierson),  whose  death  came  three  months  later 

1  "The  Annals  or  History  of  Yale-College,"  published  at  New  Haven 
in  1766. 


The  Need  of  a  Colony  College 


145 


from  exposure  during  a  storm.-^  So  that  John  Daven- 
port entered  into  James  Pierpont's  life  in  more  ways  than 
one,  and  the  connection  bridges  for  us  the  gap  between  the 
first  efforts  for  a  Colony  college  and  its  later  establishment. 
Under  the  frowning  Calvinistic  labels  of  the  old  Daven- 
port books  in  Pierpont's  parsonage  library  in  New  Haven, 
and  over  the  barrels  of  green  wine,  and  the  tobacco  and 
pipes,  and  rum,  which  he  laid  in  from  the  thrifty  Captain 
Browne's  voyages  to  Boston,  there  now  must  have  begun 
that  long  series  of  talks  between  him  and  his  neighboring 
ministers,  Andrew,   Russel,   and  Abraham  Pierson,  which 

1  James  Pierpont  married  Sarah  Haynes,  granddaughter  of  Governor 
Haynes  of  Connecticut,  in  1694,  and,  on  her  early  death,  married  Mary 
Hooker,  granddaughter  of  Thomas  Hooker,  in  1698.  Sarah,  daughter  of 
this  third  marriage,  became  the  wife  of  Jonathan  Edwards. 


SUaffiers  house  ^  Jjosfo, 


146  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

were  to  do  with  the  condition  of  the  Colony,  the  serious 
affairs  at  Harvard,  and  the  need  of  a  college  of  their  own. 

In  Connecticut,  as  we  may  well  imagine  Pierpont  out- 
lining the  conditions  that  faced  these  ambitious  young 
ministers,  matters  church-wise  were  going  from  bad  to 
worse.  But  a  few  years  before,  the  half-dozen  New  Haven 
County  ministers  had  joined  in  instituting  "lecture-days"  to 
stem  the  rising  tide  of  general  indifference  to  spiritual 
matters.  Even  that  effort  had  had  to  be  supported  by  town- 
meeting  vote,  so  that  the  town  constables  should  be  urged 
to  "prevent  all  disorders"  on  lecture-days,  "and  particularly 
that  there  be  no  horse-racings,  it  being  a  great  disorder." 
And  it  had  been  found  necessary  to  have  the  town  officers 
instruct  the  heads  of  families  that  on  such  days  "none  of 
their  children  or  servants  be  allowed  to  frequent  the  ordi- 
naries, or  any  private  houses  for  tippling,  neither  with 
strangers  or  others,"  the  "strangers"  undoubtedly  being 
such  boozing  sailors  as  had  from  the  early  times  led  New 
Haven  youth  into  bibulous  temptations. 

To  such  a  pass  had  come  that  Puritan  religious  fervor 
which  the  New  Haven  church  had  been  established  to  make 
endure.  Nor  were  the  churches  themselves  much  better  off. 
The  traditional  independence  of  the  several  congregations 
had  led  to  intolerable  conditions,  in  that  many  young  men — 
mostly  Harvard  graduates — who  were  hardly  known  to  the 
settled  ministers  of  other  churches,  and  whose  theological 
tendencies  were,  to  say  the  least,  under  suspicion,  were  being 
informally  introduced  to  vacant  pulpits  and  settled  there 
without  the  sanction  of  the  older  ministers.  Matters  were 
in  such  a  state,  Pierpont  would  have  said,  that,  unless  some- 
thing definite  were  done,  it  would  be  but  a  short  time  before 
uninvited  teachers  of  the  new  theology  of  the  Brattles  and 
John  Leverett  would  be  spreading  from  Boston  through  the 
Connecticut  pulpits. 


The  Need  of  a  Colony  College  147 

And  even  Harvard  itself  was  in  a  dangerously  unstable 
state,  in  relatl-on  to  this  impending  trouble  in  the  Connecticut 
churches.  "Degrees  at  college"  (Pierpont  might,  in  1699, 
have  said,  as  wrote  Trumbull  a  century  later)  "were  es- 
teemed no  sufficient  evidence  of  men's  piety,  knowledge  of 
theology,  or  ministerial  gifts  and  qualifications."  So  that 
the  Harvard  situation  under  Increase  Mather,  which  we 
have  noticed  in  previous  pages,  was  likewise  undoubtedly 
taking  its  place  in  these  serious  New  Haven  conferences. 
We  have  no  absolute  knowledge  of  James  Pierpont's  atti- 
tude toward  the  Harvard  troubles  of  these  few  years  before 
1700.  But,  if  we  group  together  his  later  correspondence 
with  both  the  Mathers;  his  friendly  relations  to  the  younger 
one,  and  his  own  position  of  compromise  on  the  Con- 
necticut Presbyterian  movement  in  the  days  of  the  Saybrook 
Synod,  we  are  probably  safe  in  assuming  that,  between 
1697  ^'^^  1700?  James  Pierpont  was  in  active  sympathy 
with  the  elder  Mather's  Harvard  troubles  and  that  these 
very  largely  came  to  form  a  part  of  his  own  thinking  on 
the  need  of  a  college  at  home. 

Quarterly  ministers'  meetings  now  began  to  be  held  in 
New  Haven  County,  and  to  these  meetings  came  the  other 
ministers  of  the  county.  If  we  may  rely  upon  tradition,  the 
college  project  was  undoubtedly  now  laid  before  these 
ministers,  and,  after  it  had  been  canvassed  and  the  situation 
set  forth  pretty  much  as  described  above,  before  a  still 
wider  circle  of  Connecticut  leaders,  including  "the  principal 
gentlemen  and  ministers"  of  all  four  counties. 


^   JllA^U^l 


!|^Sf^J^PP>C;ii»ij^rj 


CHAPTER  IV 


THE  "FOUNDING"  BY  THE  MINISTERS 


HILE  the  original  leaders  of  the 
Colony  had  now  passed  off  the  stage, 
this  wider  circle  of  Connecticut  "minis- 
ters and  gentlemen"  contained  some  of 
the  strongest  men  in  Connecticut  colo- 
nial history.  Robert  Treat,  of  Mil- 
ford,  had  just  declined  the  Governor- 
ship after  serving  fifteen  years,  and, 
now  an  old  man  and  famous  for  his  military  campaigns 
against  the  Indians  at  Springfield  and  Hadley  and  for  his 
loyalty  to  the  charter  when  Andros  arrived  at  Hartford  to 
take  it  away,  was  now  Deputy  Governor.  He  had  been  suc- 
ceeded as  Governor  by  Fitz-John  Winthrop  of  New  Lon- 


The  "Founding"  by  the  Ministers  149 

don,  son  of  that  John  Winthrop  who  had  secured  the  Colony 
charter.  It  is  among  the  ministers  of  the  four  counties, 
however,  that  we  still  find,  by  1700,  the  leaders  in  public 
affairs.  Their  acquaintance,  inasmuch  as  they  will  come  to 
the  front  in  the  ensuing  chapters,  will  be  worth  making. 

In  Hartford  County  the  aged  Gershom  Bulkeley  of 
Wethersfield,  for  many  years  unable  to  attend  to  church 
affairs,  was  one  of  the  best  known  of  these  ministers.  Three 
young  Harvard  men  were  in  pulpits  at  Windsor,  Glaston- 
bury, and  Simsbury.  The  county  had,  however,  three 
Harvard  graduates  not  far  past  forty  years  of  age,  who 
were  among  the  active  leaders  in  the  Colony.  These  were 
Timothy  Woodbridge  of  Hartford,  Samuel  Mather  of  the 
first  church  in  Windsor,  and  Noadiah  Russell  of  Middle- 
town. 

Of  these,  Samuel  Mather  was  "httle  &  feeble,"  as  he  said 
of  himself,  and  was  not  in  good  health  at  this  time;  yet  he 
had  had  "judgment,  and  consummate  tact,"  as  had  been 
shown  in  his  settlement  of  the  long-standing  Windsor 
church  difficulties.  "A  solid  &  Orthodox  Divine  is  also  got 
to  Heaven,"  wrote  his  classmate  Sewall  at  his  death  many 
years  later.  He  was  a  son-in-law  of  Deputy  Governor 
Robert  Treat.  Noadiah  Russell  of  Middletown,  "little  of 
stature,  pious  and  holy"  and  a  classmate  of  Pierpont  and 
Samuel  Russel,  was  in  excellent  standing  among  the  Hart- 
ford ministers.  He  had  been  born  in  New  Haven  and  gone 
to  Harvard  from  the  Hopkins  Grammar  School.  He  had 
made  a  catalogue  of  "ye  double  books"  in  the  Harvard 
Library,  had  become  the  Ipswich  schoolmaster,  and  there 
had  compiled  his  famous  almanacs  which  we  shall  refer  to 
later  on,  and  had  then  come  to  Middletown.  He  had  early 
grown  up  under  John  Davenport's  keen  eye,  and,  as  Middle- 
town's  minister,  "well  performed  his  work,  and  effectually 


150  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

molded  the  character  and  formed  the  habits  of  the  people" 
there.    There  is  an  extant  memorial  of  him  where  we  read : 

His  head  with  learning,  prudence,  holy  art; 
Firm  faith  and  love,  humility  his  heart, 
Peaceful  and  meek,  but  yet  with  courage  stout, 
I  Engaged  the  fiend  and  did  him  sorely  rout. 

Timothy  Woodbridge,  of  Hartford,  however,  was  the 
leading  Hartford  County  minister.  A  distinguished  Colony 
leader  and  a  considerable  figure  in  the  early  annals  of  Yale, 
this  Harvard  graduate  of  1675  was  an  able  successor  to 
the  responsibilities  of  Hooker  and  Haynes.  He  had  been 
born  in  the  parish  of  Barford  St.  Martin's,  Wiltshire, 
England,  the  son  of  a  clergyman  and  the  grandson  of 
Governor  Thomas  Dudley  of  Massachusetts,  and  was  at 
this  time  forty-four  years  old.  He  appears  to  have  been  of 
much  importance  in  the  Colony  affairs  of  the  day.  He  had 
drafted  the  Colony  Address  to  King  William,  and  he  was 
a  writer  of  more  than  the  usual  number  of  works, — all 
sermons, — that  came  out  of  a  Connecticut  parsonage  study 
in  his  lifetime.  In  the  fulsome  obituary  notices  of  the  day 
he  was  given  a  more  than  customary  list  of  accomplish- 
ments. He  was,  it  was  said,  "a  star  of  the  first  Magnitude. 
He  had  also  an  happy  Evenness  of  Temper,  and  was 
adorned  with  all  social  Virtues,  whereby  his  Conversation 
became  sweet  and  amiable."  Jonathan  Edwards  was  to 
say  of  him  at  his  death  that  he  had  a  "Comley  Majestic 
Aspect  (being  much  Taller  than  the  common  Size),"  and 
that  he  had  "Great  Courtesy  &  Affability."  As  we  shall  see, 
he  was  the  leader  of  the  opposition  to  James  Pierpont  in 
the  coming  organization  of  the  Collegiate  School,  though  in 
later  years  to  become  one  of  its  strongest  friends  and  sup- 
porters. Woodbridge  seems  to  have  been  one  of  the  leaders 
in  the  Connecticut  church-synod  party. 


The  "Founding"  by  the  Ministers  151 

In  Fairfield  County  there  were  at  that  time  four  minis- 
ters: Israel  Chauncy,  then  fifty-six  years  old,  of  Stratford; 
Joseph  Webb  of  Fairfield,  and  John  Davenport  of  Stam- 
ford, both  just  past  thirty;  and  the  young  Stephen  Buck- 
ingham of  Norwalk.  They  were  an  interesting  and  very 
active  group  of  public  men.  Israel  Chauncy  had  been 
graduated  from  Harvard  in  1661,  the  third  son  of  Presi- 
dent Chauncey  of  Harvard  to  be  in  that  class.  Beginning 
his  career  as  the  Stratford  schoolmaster,  he  had  been  chosen 
by  the  people  there  for  their  minister  five  years  later,  and 
was  the  hero  of  the  contemporaneously  famous  story  which 
had  it  that  at  his  ordination  by  the  laymen  of  his  church  the 
good  elder  had  forgotten  to  remove  his  gloves  (it  being  a 
cold  December  day)  and,  in  the  imposition  of  hands  on 
the  new  minister's  head,  had  done  his  part  in  a  leather 
mitten.  This  affair  of  the  "leather  mitten"  was  made  much 
of  by  ridiculing  Episcopalians  of  the  time,  and,  later  on,  by 
Presbyterians.  Chauncy  got  into  several  heated  theological 
controversies  at  Stratford,  and  seems  to  have  been  a  staunch 
independent  of  the  old  school.  He  was  chaplain  of  Colonel 
Robert  Treat's  Indian  expedition,  and  "chirugian,"  in  which 
latter  post  he  used  the  considerable,  though  crude,  medical 
knowledge  that  he  had  picked  up  when  at  Harvard.  Israel 
Chauncy  had  in  his  day  "a  high  reputation  for  scholarship." 
He  was,  an  old  lady  long  afterwards  said,  "one  of  the 
most  benevolent,  hospitable  gentlemen"  she  ever  knew. 
He  wrote  the  parts  of  the  "New  England  Almanac"  for 
1663  dealing  with  the  "Theory  of  Planetary  Orbs"  and 
eclipses.  Joseph  Webb  was  prepared  for  Harvard  under 
our  old  acquaintance,  Ezekiel  Cheever,  at  Boston,  was 
"thence  translated  to  the  College  at  Cambridge  and  de- 
servedly wore  the  Honours  of  it,"  was  graduated  in  the 
Class  of  1684,  and  was  now  thirty-four  years  of  age  and 
minister  at   Fairfield.     While   a  Sophomore   at   Harvard 


152  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

young  Webb  had  come  under  the  Corporation's  discipline 
for  hazing  Freshman,  refusing  to  obey  College  rules,  and 
staying  away  when  President  Rogers  sent  for  him.  He 
was  expelled,  and,  having  asked  for  his  Bible  with  his  name 
on  the  fly  leaf,  was  given  it  by  Increase  Mather,  then  a 
Fellow,  who  handed  it  to  him  after  tearing  out  the  leaf. 
But  the  young  culprit,  even  after  this  harsh  treatment, 
publicly  apologized  and  was  reinstated.  He  had  now  been 
at  Fairfield  for  six  years,  and,  with  his  neighbor  Chauncy, 
was  one  of  the  staunchest  of  "the  Congregational  men" 
whom  we  have  heard  about.  A  picture  of  him  by  a  con- 
temporary is  an  attractive  one:  "He  was  hospitable  in  his 
House  (says  this  acquaintance),  free  and  facetious  in 
common  Conversation,  and  most  tenderly  affected  towards 
his  relatives."  He  was  a  firm  Calvinist  in  principles. 
Three  years  his  junior,  John  Davenport,  grandson  of  New 
Haven's  founder,  was  the  Stamford  minister  at  this  time. 
He  had  for  a  short  period  after  1687  been  the  Hopkins 
Grammar  schoolmaster  at  New  Haven,  and  had  now  been 
in  Stamford  six  years.  While  I  am  not  sure  that  we  can 
think  of  him  as  quite  so  attractive  a  man  as  was  Joseph 
Webb  ("he  was  not  over-careful  of  pleasing  Men,  but  ever 
fearful  of  displeasing  God"),  we  have  many  evidences  that 
he  had  inherited  with  that  characteristic  the  mental  vigor  of 
his  famous  grandfather.  "Eagle-eyed  to  discern  the 
Approaches  of  Sin,"  and  a  great  temperance  preacher,  he 
was  said  to  have  been  as  familiar  with  Hebrew,  Greek,  and 
Latin  "as  with  his  Mother  Tongue."  With  Increase 
Mather  holding  the  fort  against  the  encroachments  of  the 
new  doctrirjes  in  Massachusetts,  young  John  Davenport, 
Calvinist  and  orthodox  Puritan  theologian,  may  well  have 
been  looked  upon,  "seated"  as  he  was  "so  near  the  Western 
Limits  of  New  England,  as  a  Bulwark  against  any  Irrup- 
tions of  corrupt  Doctrines  and  manners"  from  that  godless 


The  "Founding"  by  the  Ministers  153 

quarter.  Stephen  Buckingham,  of  Norwalk,  then  but 
twenty-seven  years  old,  with  Davenport,  does  not  appear 
in  Yale  chronicles  until  some  years  later. 

In  the  New  London  corner  of  the  Colony  there  were  nine 
settled  ministers  at  this  time,  all  but  one  of  them  Harvard 
graduates,  and  nearly  all  of  them  to  become  closely  identi- 
fied with  Yale's  beginnings.  In  1700  the  two  oldest  of 
these  were  the  brothers  James  and  Moses  Noyes,  both 
now  around  sixty  years  of  age,  and  settled  over  the  churches 
at  Stonington  and  Lyme,  respectively.  They  had  been 
graduated  together  from  Harvard  in  the  Class  of  1659, 
with  Samuel  Willard  (later  to  be  Vice-President  of  Har- 
vard) ,  and  Samuel,  son  of  Ezekiel  Cheever.  James  Noyes, 
the  elder  of  these  "Noyces  Ambo"  (as  the  Harvard 
Steward's  books  of  their  college  days  dub  them),  was,  like 
Israel  Chauncy  of  Stratford,  a  doctor  as  well  as  a  minister. 
He  "gave  away  [so  it  was  said]  more  in  Medicines,  than 
his  Annual  Salary  as  Minister  amounted  to."  Very  likely 
he  was  a  good  upholder  of  the  traditional  independence  of 
the  various  Connecticut  churches,  it  being  said  of  him  that 
he  "was  a  great  friend  to  Liberties  both  Civil  &  religious, 
and  no  man  more  Vigorous  to  stand  up  when  any  unjust 
Encroachments  were  made  upon  Either."  As  a  man  "he 
was  extraordinarily  Hospitable  to  all  Strangers,"  and  "like 
a  Father"  to  his  flock.  In  his  church  relations  he  was 
"mighty  in  Prayer"  and  "knew  the  art  of  Wrestling  with 
God."  When  he  was  attempting  to  reclaim  some  back- 
sliding member  of  his  congregation  he  had  the  generous 
habit  of  "laying  himself  under  Voluntary  bonds  of  Self- 
denial"  to  encourage  his  parishioner  in  his.  Among  people, 
it  was  said,  "his  Presence  was  grave  and  Venerable,  such 
as  struck  an  awe  into  the  boldest  Offenders,  they  being 
afraid  or  ashamed  to  Discover  their  follies  in  his  sight." 
As  he  came  into  old  age,  he  was  widely  accepted  as  a  leader 


154  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

in  church  affairs  and  as  a  presiding  officer  at  conventions. 
One  of  his  chief  contributions  on  such  occasions,  it  was  said 
of  him,  was  his  "true  spirit  of  the  Peacemaker."  His 
shghtly  younger  brother,  Moses  Noyes,  now  minister  at 
Lyme,  was  one  of  the  last  of  the  Connecticut  ministers  to 
go  over  to  the  principles  of  the  "Half-way  Covenant."  So 
set  in  his  ways  was  he,  and  so  "truly  Calvinistic,"  that  he 
was  one  of  the  most  energetic  critics  of  the  declining  minis- 
try of  the  times.  So  stoutly  opposed  was  he  to  the  "Errors 
which  he  feared  were  creeping  in  among  us,  particularly  in 
the  Schools  and  young  Candidates  for  the  Ministry,"  that 
it  was  not  until  the  Collegiate  School  had  been  going  for 
seventeen  years  and  he  had  become  assured  of  its  orthodoxy, 
that  he  would  accept  a  graduate  of  it  as  an  assistant  in  his 
pulpit.  Thomas  Buclcingham,  minister  of  the  Saybrook 
church,  and  Abraham  Pierson  of  Killingworth  were  next 
oldest  of  these  New  London  ministers, — both  being  fifty- 
five  at  this  time.  Of  Abraham  Pierson,  his  particular  place 
in  Yale  history  calls  for  the  more  extended  account  of  him 
and  his  life  which  I  give  later  on  in  these  pages.  Concern- 
ing Thomas  Buckingham,  taking  hardly  a  less  important 
place,  we  know  but  little.  He  was  the  only  New  London 
County  minister  not  a  college  graduate.  He  was  of  a 
pioneer  Milford  family  and  received  what  education  he  had 
at  the  Hopkins  Grammar  School  in  New  Haven.^  As  events 
will  show,  he  was  not  only  an  able  man,  but  a  stout  believer 
in  his  own  views.  At  this  time  he  was  looked  upon  as  one 
of  the  most  capable  men  in  the  southern  part  of  the  Colony. 

1 1  am  indebted  to  Miss  M.  C.  Holman  of  Saybrook  for  the  further  in- 
formation about  Buckingham  that  he  was  the  son  of  Thomas  and  Hannah 
Buckingham,  who  came  over  in  the  "Hector"  with  Eaton  and  Davenport. 
He  studied  for  the  ministry  with  the  Rev.  John  Whiting  of  Hartford  and 
preached  for  a  short  time  in  Wethersfield  before  taking  the  Saybrook 
Meeting-house.  His  parish  included  the  present  towns  of  Essex,  Chester, 
Westbrook,  and  a  part  of  Lyme. 


The  "Founding"  by  the  Ministers  155 

Gurdon  Saltonstall,  minister  at  New  London  (and  at 
this  time  just  coming  into  public  notice),  was  the  fourth  of 
the  important  New  London  County  ministers.  Time  was  to 
bring  this  really  remarkable  man  into  the  forefront  of  the 
builders  of  Yale.  He  was  the  pastor  of  Governor  Fitz- 
John  Winthrop,  and  was  to  become  his  successor  as  the 
Colony's  chief  magistrate,  leaving  the  ministry  for  that 
public  service.  But  Gurdon  Saltonstall,  seven  years  before 
that  time,  in  1700,  and  when  he  was  but  thirty-four  years  of 
age,  was  beginning  to  show  his  exceptional  talents  for  public 
duties.  I  presume  that,  of  all  the  Colony  ministers  of  his 
day,  Saltonstall  was,  by  natural  endowments,  the  most  con- 
spicuous and  capable.  He  was  the  son  of  the  Nathaniel 
Saltonstall  who  was  the  classmate  of  his  neighboring  minis- 
ters, the  now  elderly  Noyces  Ambo.  At  the  early  age  of 
eighteen,  when  he  himself  received  his  Harvard  degree,  he 
had  been  renowned  for  his  "vast  proficiency  in  all  the  parts 
of  Useful  Learning  &  giving  Early  Hopes  of  that  future 
great  man  which  he  afterwards  proved."  He  had  been 
ordained  at  New  London  when  he  was  twenty-one  years  of 
age,  and  immediately  came  to  the  front  as  a  young  man  of 
exceptional  knowledge  of  affairs  and  promise.  Before  he 
was  out  of  college  six  years,  he  was  being  consulted  at  his 
New  London  parsonage  by  magistrates  and  clergymen  from 
all  parts  of  the  Colony.  Three  years  later  he  was  chosen 
for  an  important  public  commission.  Though  home  rule 
under  the  Colony  charter  had  not  been  taken  away,  it  had 
been  suspended  under  Andros  from  1687  to  1689,  and  now 
had  been  resumed  under  Governor  Treat.  The  appoint- 
ment of  the  Governor  of  New  York  to  command  the  Con- 
necticut militia,  however,  had  renewed  the  charter  question, 
and  Fitz-John  Winthrop  of  New  London  was  sent  to 
England  to  look  into  it.  Winthrop  asked  his  young  minister, 
Saltonstall,  to  accompany  him.     The  upshot  of  their  visit 


156  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

in  London  was  emphatically  for  the  continued  legality  of  the 
original  Winthrop  charter,  the  Royal  Attorney  General 
deciding  the  case  as  presented  by  Winthrop  and  Saltonstall. 
When  Fitz-John  Winthrop  became  Governor  under  this 
confirmed  charter  in  1698,  his  pastor,  Gurdon  Saltonstall, 
naturally  came  into  still  broader  relations  to  Colony  affairs, 
and  was  appointed  chief  judge  of  the  county  court. 

We  have  already  made  the  acquaintance  of  James  Pier- 
pont,  and  of  his  two  neighbors,  Samuel  Russel  and  Samuel 
Andrew.  The  Guilford  minister  at  this  time  was  young 
Thomas  Ruggles,  ten  years  out  of  Harvard.  In  Walling- 
ford  Samuel  Street  was  still  the  minister,  and  in  Derby 
was  the  youthful  Joseph  Moss,  just  graduated  from 
Harvard. 

All  but  two  or  three  of  these  thirty-odd  Connecticut 
ministers  of  1700  were  Harvard  graduates.  They  were  all 
settled  over  Congregational  churches,  and,  in  their 
quarterly  meetings  and  in  occasional  chance  conversations, 
as  the  college  leaders  went  about  their  counties  on  horse- 
back, attending  to  the  sick  and  backsliding,  were  being  con- 
sulted as  to  the  proposed  school. 

II 

Placed  before  at  least  a  number  of  these  ministers  who 
lived  along  the  Long  Island  coast,  the  first  stumbling-block 
which  appears  to  have  been  encountered  was  the  turn  the 
project  took,  among  a  number  of  prominent  "ministers  and 
Gentlemen,"  in  connection  with  the  increasing  demand  for 
some  better  form  of  church  government.  Both  in  Massa- 
chusetts and  in  Connecticut  a  movement  was  now  under 
way  so  to  organize  the  traditional  New  England  churches 
that  they  could  meet  the  oncoming  change  in  theology  and 
morals  with  a  common  front.  This  was  meeting  with  dif- 
ficulties in  the   changing  Massachusetts  of  that  day.      In 


The  ^'Founding"  by  the  Ministers  157 

Connecticut  it  was  taking  the  form  of  a  demand  for  a  church 
synod  which  should  organize  the  various  independent  con- 
gregations in  a  Colony  church  of  a  loose  presbyterian  mould. 

Just  how  the  Connecticut  ministers  divided  on  this  ques- 
tion we  do  not  know.  There  were,  doubtless,  the  usual  two 
extremes;  the  strong  Presbyterians  and  the  rigid  adherents 
of  the  traditional  independence.  And  there  were  the 
middle-way  men,  who  were  prepared  for  some  church 
organization  and  yet  unwilling  to  see  an  ecclesiastical  central 
government  fastened  upon  the  churches.  This  latter  party 
was  undoubtedly  led  by  the  New  Haven  promoters  of  the 
college.  For,  if  any  one  fact  stands  out  from  the  hazy 
outlines  of  the  years  1 700-1 701,  it  is  that  this  group, — 
consisting  of  such  seacoast-town  ministers  as  Pierpont, 
Andrew,  Buckingham,  Chauncy,  James  Noyes,  and  Pierson, 
— declined  to  have  their  college  come  under  church  control, 
however  much  they  were  in  favor  of  such  an  ecclesiastical 
organization  for  the  Colony.  Rev.  Gurdon  Saltonstall  and 
Rev.  Timothy  Woodbridge  appear  to  have  been  of  the 
church-synod  party. 

That  this  was  a  crisis  In  these  preliminary  negotiations 
between  the  Connecticut  ministers,  needs  no  argument. 
The  character  of  the  coming  Yale  College  was  in  the 
balance.  Had  the  synod  party  won  their  point,  the  Colle- 
giate School  would  not  have  been  established  for  several 
years,  if  at  all,  and  when  established  would  have  been 
the  victim  of  the  long-drawn-out  controversies  and  troubles 
that  came  to  the  Colony  churches  when  the  Saybrook  Plat- 
form was  finally  adopted.  Looked  at  from  this  point  of 
view,  we  may  well  accept  James  Pierpont's  services  at  this 
time,  as  of  the  utmost  Importance  to  the  future  Yale. 

And  so,  if,  as  the  historian  Trumbull  tells  us,  the  college 
scheme  was  publicly  broached  by  Pierpont  some  time  after 
1698,  It  Is  probable  that  the  next  two  years  saw  its  general 


1^8  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

discussion  along  the  lines  just  mentioned,  and,  for  the 
reasons  stated,  nothing  done  about  it.  But  in  1 700-1 701 
the  project  rather  suddenly  came  to  be  a  public  question. 

There  are  two  accounts  of  the  progress  of  the  college 
affair  during  these  two  years. 

Both  of  these  come  down  to  us  from  President  Clap. 
His  "Annals  of  Yale-College,"  printed  in  1766  at  New 
Haven,  gives  the  date  1700  for  "the  first  Founding 
thereof."  In  this  narrative  President  Clap  proceeds  to 
tell  how  in  that  year  "ten  of  the  principal  Ministers  in  the 
Colony  were  nominated  and  agreed  upon  by  a  general 
Consent  both  of  the  Ministers  and  people,  to  stand  as 
Trustees  or  Undertakers  to  found,  erect,  and  govern  a 
College," — adding  the  ministers  named  in  the  legislative 
document  of  1701  as  these  trustees.  He  proceeds  to  say 
that  these  ministers  "met  at  New  Haven  and  formed  them- 
selves into  a  Body  or  Society,  to  consist  of  eleven  Ministers, 
including  a  Rector,  and  agreed  to  Found  a  College  in  the 
Colony  of  Connecticut;  which  they  did  at  their  next  Meeting 
at  Branford."  He  then  gives  the  story  which  has  become 
traditional,  that  "Each  Member  brought  [to  Branford  in 
1700]  a  Number  of  Books  and  presented  them  to  the  Body; 
and  laying  them  on  a  Table,  said  these  words,  or  to  this 
effect;  'I  give  these  books  for  the  founding  a  College  in  this 
Colony.'  "  President  Clap  then  says  that  these  Founders 
"afterwards  began  to  doubt  whether  they  were  fully  vested 
with  a  legal  Capacity  to  hold  Lands,  and  whether  private 
Donations  and  contributions  would  yield  a  Sufficiency  to 
carry  on  so  great  a  Design;  it  was  therefore  proposed  to 
make  Application  to  the  Hon.  the  General  Assembly  of  the 
Colony  for  some  Assistance,  and  to  ask  for  a  charter." 
Meetings  were  held  on  this  question,  says  Clap,  and  the 
advice  asked  of  "some  of  the  ablest  lawyers  both  in,  and 
out  of  the  Government."     It  being  decided  to  do  this,  goes 


The  "Founding"  by  the  Ministers  159 

this  tradition  of  Yale's  beginnings,  the  trustees  of  the 
already-founded  school  wrote  to  Judge  Sewall  and  Secretary 
Addington  of  Boston  for  the  draft  of  a  charter.  This  was 
presented  to  the  Assembly  in  1701,  with  a  public  petition, 
and  the  charter  was  granted. 

This  understanding  of  the  facts  of  the  "founding"  passed 
current  for  generations  after  President  Clap's  "Annals" 
were  published  in  1766.  The  first  President  Dwight 
accepted  the  date  1700.  The  one  hundred  and  fiftieth  anni- 
versary was  celebrated  in  1850.  It  was  so  accepted  by 
every  authority  on  Yale's  founding  until  a  reexamination 
of  the  contemporary  documents  in  Yale's  possession,  and  of 
President  Clap's  own  manuscripts,  threw  doubt  upon  its 
accuracy.^  That  the  year  1700  was  commonly  accepted 
during  the  early  i8th  Century  might  appear  from  the  fact 
that,  at  the  College  Commencement  in  1750,  there  were 
suddenly  given  a  much  larger  number  of  honorary  degrees 
than  had  been  given  before  that  date, — eight  as  against  not 
over  two  previously,  and  to  distinguished  non-graduates 
rather  than  to  young  Harvard  men  and  occasional  donors. 

Another  date, — 1701, — however,  is  likewise  given  by 
President  Clap.  Written  in  1747,  one  manuscript  of  the 
"Annals"  gives  this  second  year  as  that  of  Yale's  founding. 
President  Clap  likewise  gives  this  year  in  a  pamphlet  pub- 
lished in  1754.  In  this  second  though  earlier  published 
account.  Clap  narrates  a  much  simpler  story  of  the  charter 
granting  than  in  his  account  published  in  1766,  and,  the 
facts  appear  to  warrant  the  assertion,  a  much  more  likely 
one.  So  far  as  the  date  goes,  it  is  quite  probable,  as  Pro- 
fessor Dexter  believes,  that  there  was  a   reason  for  this 

1  The  reader  is  referred  to  Professor  Dexter's  study  of  this  question  in 
the  published  papers  of  the  New  Haven  Historical  Society,  and  to  Professor 
Charles  H.  Smith's  exhaustive  restudy  of  it,  also  published  in  that  series 
some  years  later. 


i6o 


The  Beginnings  of  Yale 


change  by  Clap.  In  the  year  1766  Clap  was  engaged  in  the 
most  important  struggle  of  his  administration.  He  was 
then  defending  the  College's  priority  of  right  to  manage  its 
own  affairs  against  the  right  to  interfere  that  the  Assembly 
was  demanding.  Priority  of  the  actual  "founding"  thus  was 
necessary,  and  so,  say  the  students  of  this  question,  the  year 
1700  was  belatedly  and  inaccurately  advanced  instead  of 
1701. 

However  that  may  be, — and  I  do  not  need  to  go  into 
the  pros  and  cons  of  what  is  perhaps  a  purely  academic 
question  at  the  most, — the  whole  matter  has  been  one  of 
much  confusion  and,  even  today,  acknowledged  uncertainty.^ 
There  is  much  to  be  said  for  both  narratives.     The  point 

1  The  Bicentennial  Celebration  of  the  University  was  held  in  October, 
1901,  the  University  thus  accepting  the  second  date  as  a  result  of  Professor 
Dexter's  researches.  In  the  historical  table  in  the  University  Catalogue, 
however,  both  1700  and  1701  are  given  as  the  dates  of  the  "Meeting  of  the 
Ministers  at  Branford,  for  founding  a  College." 


The  "Founding"  by  the  Ministers  i6i 

turns,  I  take  it,  upon  the  use  of  the  term  "founding."  There 
can  hardly  be  any  question  that  meetings,  perhaps  frequent, 
were  held  in  the  year  1700  and  possibly  before  that  time 
(as  Clap's  "Annals"  asserts  in  its  marginal  dates),  at  which 
the  college  project  was  discussed.  Branford  being  midway 
between  the  extreme  towns  of  the  seacoast  ministers,  it  is 
quite  possible  that  several  meetings  were  held  there,  and 
that  the  traditional  "founding"  meeting  of  1700  did  occur 
in  Samuel  Russel's  parsonage  parlor,  as  the  story  has  it. 
But,  judging  from  the  evidence  of  dated  letters  in  the  early 
fall  of  1 70 1,  it  may  be  said  that,  if  these  meetings  were 
held,  they  could  not  have  been  as  formal,  or  have  come  to 
such  precise  ends  as  tradition  has  held  that  they  did.  If 
it  was  generally  considered  that  there  were  to  be  eight 
trustees,  as  appears  from  at  least  one  letter  of  September, 
1 701,  Clap's  story  that  the  final  ten  had  been  chosen  in 
1699  and  had  "founded"  the  School  in  1700  hardly  holds 
water.  I  imagine  that  we  need  not  entirely  discredit  the 
engaging  Branford  "founding"  story  of  1700,  if  we  at  the 
same  time  believe  that  nothing  so  formal  as  that  procedure 
occurred  until  a  year  later. 

Ill 

Which  brings  us  to  the  year  1701,  famous  in  Yale  annals. 

In  the  summer  and  early  fall  of  this  year  the  long-dis- 
cussed and  postponed  matter  of  establishing  a  Connecticut 
college  was  rather  suddenly  brought  to  a  climax  by  the 
leaders  in  it. 

That  this  was  the  result  of  the  unexpected  decision  of  the 
General  Assembly  to  meet  in  New  Haven  in  October  of  that 
year,  for  the  first  time  since  the  absorption  of  the  old  New 
Haven  Colony  by  Connecticut,  would  seem  to  be  the  fact. 
When  the  hard  struggle  of  Davenport's  people  against 
absorption    by    Winthrop's    Connecticut    had    been    at    its 


i62  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

hottest,  the  latter  Colony  had  proposed,  as  a  sop  to  the 
dissatisfied  New  Haveners,  that  New  Haven  should  be 
made  a  coordinate  capital  of  the  new  commonwealth  with 
Hartford.  Davenport  had  abruptly  refused  this  offer  (as 
he  had  refused  all  compromises  on  the  question  of  New 
Haven's  independence),  and  it  had  not  been  renewed  after 
the  consolidation.  The  annual  meetings  of  the  General 
Assembly,  therefore,  had  been  held  at  Hartford  ever  since 
1664,  to  the  increasing  discontent  of  the  second  generation 
of  New  Haven  voters.  But  in  1698  an  important  reorgani- 
zation had  been  enacted  of  the  Colony  legislature.  Fitz- 
John  Winthrop,  of  New  London,  had  been  elected  Gover- 
nor as  a  reward  for  his  successful  securing  of  a  confirmation 
of  the  charter.  The  Assembly,  which  previously  had  con- 
sisted of  but  one  house  (the  magistrates  sitting  as  an  inde- 
pendent court)  was  now  reformed  with  two  houses, — the 
Governor  and  Magistrates  to  form  the  Upper,  and  the 
Deputies  from  the  various  towns  the  Lower  with  power  to 
choose  their  own  speaker.  The  consent  of  both  Houses 
was  ordered  for  the  passage  of  any  act. 

What  was  the  particular  cause  of  the  vote  to  hold  the 
October  meeting  of  that  year  and  thereafter,  in  New  Haven, 
and  thus  bring  the  two  old  sections  of  the  Colony  into 
harmony,  does  not  appear.  But  the  knowledge  of  this  deci- 
sion was  public  property  early  in  May,  1701,  and,  if  the 
personal  relations  of  the  college  promoters  to  the  leaders  of 
the  coming  October  session  were  of  any  promise,  it  may  be 
considered  that  Pierpont  and  his  friends  saw  their  oppor- 
tunity to  proceed  at  once  upon  their  plans.  We  have  seen 
that  Governor  Winthrop  was  the  close  friend  and  parish- 
ioner of  Gurdon  Saltonstall  of  New  London.  Deputy 
Governor  Treat,  of  Milford,  was  the  father-in-law  of 
Samuel  Andrew.  Speaker  Peter  Burr  was  in  Andrew's 
church.     Many  of  the  best  men  in  the  two  Houses  were 


The  "Founding"  by  the  Ministers  163 

parishioners  of  the  ministers  interested  in  the  scheme.  In 
the  hght  of  these  fortunate  circumstances,  the  occasion  that 
thus  presented  itself  was  the  first  that  promised  results 
since  the  college  project  had  been  broached. 

I  suppose  that  further  and  energetic  meetings  now  began 
among  the  small  group  of  ministers  along  the  Long  Island 
shore  who  had  fathered  the  college  plan,  and  that  the 
situation  created  by  this  sudden  meeting  of  the  Assembly 
in  New  Haven  was  thoroughly  discussed  by  them.  The 
General  Assembly  was  to  be  asked  for  a  charter.  As  Presi- 
dent Clap  says,  no  doubt  this  decision  had  been  the  occasion 
of  some  debate  and  misgivings.  It  had  been  held  in  Har- 
vard's case  that  her  charter  had  expired  with  the  annulment 
of  Massachusett's,  and  that  a  new  one  must  have  the  agree- 
ment of  the  Crown.  Connecticut  had  not  lost  her  charter, 
and  had  had  it  confirmed.  Yet  the  relations  between  that 
Colony  and  England  were  still  on  such  a  slender  thread 
that  there  might  be  serious  danger  were  the  Connecticut 
Assembly  to  proceed,  in  the  light  of  the  Massachusetts 
experience  over  Harvard's  charter,  to  grant  to  the  proposed 
founders  of  a  Connecticut  college  one  of  their  own.  There 
were  other  questions  also  Involved,  regarding  rights  of  the 
Colony  over  the  proposed  school  and  the  legality  of  gifts 
received  if  a  possibly  illegal  charter  were  granted  and  the 
Royal  officers  in  England  annulled  it. 

Matters  being  In  this  hazy  state,  and  the  sessions  of  the 
General  Assembly  for  the  first  time  In  New  Haven  but  three 
months  away,  the  more  energetic  of  the  college  promoters 
seem  to  have  now  taken  their  first  definite  public  step.  They 
now  sent  out,  either  together  or  singly,  a  number  of  letters, 
asking  for  advice,  not  only  on  the  educational  side,  but  on 
the  highly  important  matter  of  the  legality  of  a  Connectlcut- 
Colony-granted  charter,  and.  If  that  were  to  be  legal,  what 
it  should  contain.     Letters  were  sent,  therefore,  to  Cotton 


164  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

Mather  and  to  Increase  Mather,  representing  Harvard; 
to  Judge  Sewall  and  Secretary  Addington  of  the  Massa- 
chusetts  Province,   representing  the   Royal  government  in 

New  England;  and  to  at 
•'O^  4! A  1/1  dJ^  i-  ^^^^^  three  Connecticut 
(^Wn  J UdfoTli^^,     gentlemen,  old  Gershom 

Bulkeley  of  Wethers- 
field;  the  Colony  Secretary,  Eleazar  Kimberly,  and  John 
Eliot,  a  young  Windsor  lawyer  who  was  to  be  a  member  of 
the  coming  Assembly. 

The  four  Massachusetts  men  thus  resorted  to  were  recog- 
nized leaders  of  the  conservative  party  there.  All  four  were 
out  of  sympathy  with  the  new  times  and  hostile  to  the  new 
Harvard  regime.  That  they  were  asked  for  their  opinions, 
amply  appears  from  their  replies.^  These  came  very  much 
to  the  same  conclusions,  and  are  so  worded  that  it  is  obvious 
that  they  were  in  response  to  requests  for  them  and  probably 
written  at  about  the  same  time.  Cotton  Mather's  letter  was 
probably  the  first  to  be  received.^  This  was  a  very  carefully- 
drawn  up  "Scheme  for  a  College"  (or  "Instructions  for  a 
Collegiate  School,"  as  James  Pierpont  endorsed  it).  But 
it  was  not  at  all  what  Pierpont  and  his  friends  had  wanted. 
It  was  a  modified  Presbyterian  proposal,  calling  for  a  synod 
of  the  Connecticut  churches  which  should  establish  "an  Uni- 
versity, that  shall  be  the  school  of  the  churches."  The 
Synod  should  choose  the  first  President  (wrote  Mather) 
and  his  successor  should  be  appointed  by  the  "Inspectors 
(or  Pastors  of  such  twelve  churches  as  the  Synod  shall  pitch 

1  President  Quincy,  in  his  massive  "History  of  Harvard,"  turns  this  about 
and  makes  it  appear  that  the  impetus  in  the  founding  of  Yale  came  from 
these  dissatisfied  and  defeated  Massachusetts  conservative  leaders,  among 
whom  these  four  were  the  most  prominent.  But  his  view  of  the  case  is  not 
supported  by  the  facts.  The  invitation  to  help  the  Connecticut  project  came 
from  the  Connecticut  Colony. 

2  President  Clap  dates  this  1700,  but  it  was  more  probably  a  year  later. 


The  "Founding"  by  the  Ministers  165 

upon)"  whose  choice  should  be  laid  before  the  churches  by 
letter  for  acceptance.  A  number  of  rules  were  suggested, 
leading  to  the  maintenance  of  the  traditional  New  England 
theology.  There  should  be  no  attempt  made  to  build  a 
"college  house,"  though  one  room  would  be  needed  for 
meetings.  The  churches  should,  at  least  at  first,  guarantee 
the  salary  of  the  President  and  "two  tutors."  And  there 
should  be  a  confession  of  Faith,  "relating  to  the  purity  of 
religion,"  which  the  college  officers  should  subscribe  to. 
The  "Inspectors"  should  visit  the  school  at  least  twice  a 
year. 

In  general,  this  "scheme"  by  Cotton  Mather  incorporated 
most  of  the  important  things  that  his  father  had  been  unable 
to  secure  for  Harvard.  The  reply  of  old  Increase  Mather, 
dated  September  15,  1701,  a  week  after  he  had  been  re- 
moved from  Harvard's  presidency,  was  also  received  by  Mr. 
Pierpont.  In  briefer  form  it  was  a  repetition  of  the  main 
points  in  his  son's  letter.  He  touched,  however,  upon  the 
charter  question,  as  Cotton  Mather  had  not.  "If  the  Con- 
necticut government  [he  wrote],  before  their  charter  is 
taken  from  them  [in  this  he  chose  the  prevalent  public  worry 
of  the  times],  shall  settle  a  revenue  for  the  maintenance  of 
such  a  school,  'tis  probable  that  property  will  not  be  taken 
from  you,  though  government  should." 

The  letter  to  Judge  Sewall  had  been  sent  on  August  7, 
1 70 1.  It  had  been  a  round-robin  letter,  signed  by  five  of 
the  seacoast-town  ministers, — Israel  Chauncy  of  Stratford, 
Thomas  Buckingham  of  Saybrook,  Abraham  Pierson  of 
Killingworth,  James  Pierpont  of  New  Haven,  and  Gurdon 
Saltonstall  of  New  London.  This  was  an  important  letter, 
— perhaps  the  most  important  that  the  trustees  sent, — and 
we  should  not  overlook  the  significance  of  these  signatures 
or  the  obvious  contents  of  the  letter  itself,  as  reflected  in 
Judge  Sewall's  answer  of  September  17.     The  ministers  of 


1 66  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

the  upper-Colony  towns  had  not  come  into  the  affair  when 
this  letter  was  written.  The  college  project,  up  to  the  first 
week  in  August,  1701,  had  remained  in  the  hands  of  the 
original  leaders,  to  whom  had  been  added  several  others 
of  the  Long  Island  Sound  villages,  who  were  of  their  way 
of  thinking. 

And  the  reply  of  these  two  Crown  officers  fits  in,  also, 
with  the  situation  as  I  have  presented  it.  Said  Sewall;  "I 
have  been  thinking  that  considering  the  present  distress  [no 
doubt  referring  to  political  difficulties  with  England],  it 
may  be  best  to  do  as  little  by  the  government  as  is  possible 
with  attaining  the  end.  And  therefore  should  not  be  eager 
in  building  a  college  [by  which  he  meant  a  house]  or 
settling  revenues  by  a  law."  The  letter  proceeds  to  suggest 
that  "the  act  only  contain  authority  for  such  a  person  [the 
President]  by  himself  and  Tutors  under  him  to  instruct 
youth  in  academical  learning,  and  give  them  degrees.  And 
let  the  act  oblige  the  president  to  pray  and  expound  the 
Scriptures  in  the  hall,"  and  so  on.  The  significance  of  this 
reply  is  clearly  twofold:  that  there  had  been  no  formal 
"founding"  of  the  college  up  to  that  time, — August,  1701, 
— but  that  the  project  was  still  in  a  hazy  state;  and  that  the 
signers  of  the  letter  were  proposing  to  go  before  the  coming 
Assembly  for  some  "action"  regarding  the  scheme.  Sewall 
adds  the  Interesting  remark,  regarding  this  latter  plan,  that 
he  hopes  "within  these  few  days  to  send  something  more 
mature  and  in  form  either  by  the  post  or  some  other  good 
hand."  And  he  drops  the  matter  there  with  the  voluntary 
promise  to  send  them  his  "small  essay  towards  opening  the 
eighteenth  century;  and  a  sheet  to  discourage  our  trading  to 
Africa  for  men."^ 

1  This  was  the  first  anti-slavery  document  to  be  published  in  New 
England,  though  its  point  must  have  been  considerably  dulled  by  Captain 
Sewall's  public  purchase  of  a  Negro  slave  a  short  time  afterwards. 


The  "Founding"  by  the  Ministers  167 

We  may  take  it,  therefore, — in  concluding  our  chronicles 
of  this  admittedly  hazy  year, — that  in  August,  1701,  the 
college  plan  had  not  proceeded  beyond  the  point  where  the 
original  promoters  of  it,  and  a  few  of  their  friends  and 
neighbors  along  the  shore  of  their  own  way  of  thinking,  had, 
with  the  approach  of  the  Assembly,  written  to  Judge  Sewall 
asking  for  an  outline  of  a  college  charter  which  they  could 
lay  before  the  friendly  Colony  legislature  which  was  in 
October  to  meet  for  the  first  time  in  New  Haven. 

IV 

The  summer  of  1701  now  passed  while  the  reply  of 
Secretary  Addington  was  awaited.  "Instructions"  for  a 
charter, — probably  by  Pierpont, — had  been  enclosed  for 
Secretary  Addington  in  the  letter  to  Sewall,  and  had  been 
handed  to  him  by  the  latter.  Until  these  arrived,  and  with 
the  near  approach  of  the  Assembly  which  was  set  for  the 
first  week  in  October,  I  think  we  may  safely  say  that  the  con- 
sultations of  James  Pierpont's  friends  must  have  been  as 
frequent  as  the  means  of  travel  allowed,  and  were  rapidly 
coming  to  a  climax.  The  synod  proposal  for  the  college 
control  was  doubtless  still  in  the  air  by  September,  1701, 
and  the  two  Mather  letters  had  been  on  that  side.  These 
had  been  side-tracked  by  the  Pierpont  party,  now  in  active 
charge  of  the  undertaking.  But  the  large  question  still 
remained,  whether  the  Colony  legislature  had  the  legal  right 
under  the  Colony  charter  to  "give  a  liberty"  to  such  a 
college,  and  whether  they  would  do  so. 

V 

Lacking  the  precise  facts,  we  have  to  depend  upon  con- 
jecture only  when  we  say  that  Pierpont  and  Andrew  and 
Pierson,  and  the  others  of  their  party,  now  proposed  to  take 


i68  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

time  by  the  forelock  and,  by  "founding"  the  college  them- 
selves, forestall  the  very  probable  opposition  that  might 
crop  out  in  the  coming  Assembly  against  the  legality  of  the 
proposed  charter.  This  is  probably  a  safe  conjecture. 
Adopting  it,  we  shall  at  least  be  sure  that  there  was  some 
gathering  at  Samuel  Russel's  house  in  Branford  imme- 
diately after  the  first  of  October,  1701.  This  is  proved  by 
the  superscription  on  the  letter  of  John  Eliot,  a  Windsor 
lawyer,  who,  replying  under  that  date  to  questions  asked 
him,  sends  his  letter  to  Abraham  Pierson  "at  Branford." 
For  it  may  be  said  that  the  contents  of  all  of  the  extant 
letters  of  the  Fall  of  1701  to  the  college  promoters  certainly 
go  to  show  that,  up  to  October,  1701,  there  had  been  no 
"founding"  by  anyone.  President  Clap's  single  authority 
to  the  contrary  is  met  by  the  significant  fact  that,  where  he 
says  from  hearsay  long  afterwards  that  ten  ministers  had 
been  chosen  previous  to  this  time,  Eliot's  letter  of  October  i, 
1701,  refers  to  the  "said  eight  Elders  and  said  Master," 
(as  if  each  county  were  to  have  two)  and  that  the  final 
number,  eleven,  was  not  arrived  at  until  after  the  Assembly 
had  met,  and  Pierpont  had  inserted  it  himself  in  the  draft 
of  a  charter. 

The  Branford  of  the  elder  Pierson's  day  had  expanded 
by  1700  into  a  scattering  hamlet  running  north  from  Bran- 
ford Point  to  the  present  village  Green,  the  latter  a  rough 
open  space  of  hollows  and  hills,  studded  with  huge  boulders. 
"Sabbath-day"  houses  stood  about  this  Green,  the  square 
wooden  Meeting-house  in  its  center.  "Whipping-post  Hill," 
so  named  from  its  use  for  the  town  stocks  of  previous  days, 
sloped  away  from  this  central  square.  Just  south  of  the 
present  burying  ground  was  the  parsonage  of  the  Rev. 
Samuel  Russel.  -  This  was  a  large  and  even  handsome  house 
in  its  day,  of  the  gaunt  and  quite  unlovely  "lean-to"  variety 
that  had  come  into  style   a  little  earlier  throughout  the 


The  "Founding"  by  the  Ministers  169 

Colony.^  One  of  the  four  large  first-floor  rooms  of  this 
house,  the  "south  parlor"  as  it  was  called,  was  traditionally 
the  place  for  the  first  formal  gathering  of  the  sponsors  for 
the  proposed  Colony  school  that  we  know  anything  definite 
about. 

All  of  the  evidence  in  the  matter  goes  to  show  that  the 
single  purpose  of  this  meeting  in  Branford  about  the  first 
of  October,  1701,  was,  by  "founding"  the  college,  there  to 
establish  a  priority  if  the  Assembly  decHned  to  accept  the 
responsibility.^  This  was  probably  done,  as  tradition  says, 
by  promising  to  give  to  the  School  a  number  of  books.  In 
all  probability  no  actual  books  were  there  given.  President 
Clap  to  the  contrary.  A  letter  from  Rev.  James  Noyes, 
expressing  his  regrets  that  he  could  not  attend  the  Saybrook 
organization  meeting  in  the  following  month,  seems  to  settle 
this  point.  He  speaks  of  some  very  recent  journey,  likely 
enough  to  this  Branford  meeting,  and  says  that  he  had 
authorized  his  brother  to  "give  out  of  my  books  at  his 
house  my  full  proportion,  and  in  nothing  would  I  be  behind- 
hand in  so  public  a  good."  If  any  books  were  actually  given 
at  Branford,  they  were  too  few  in  number  to  be  of  any 
consequence. 

Abraham  Pierson  brought  two  letters  to  this  Branford 
meeting  bearing  on  this  all-important  necessity  for  a  prior 
"founding." 

Old  Gershom  Bulkeley,  under  date  of  September  27,  had 
sent  to  Mr.  Pierson  his  reply  to  the  request  for  his  opinion 
on  the  legaHty  of  a  Colony  charter.     The  old  gentleman 

1  The  old  Samuel  Russel  house  was  pulled  down  about  1836,  but  the 
doors  were  saved  and  today  may  be  seen  set  into  the  walls  of  the  Librarian's 
office  in  the  University  Library.      (See  page  148.) 

2  Professor  Dexter  guardedly  suggests  this  in  his  paper  referred  to,  and 
Professor  Smith,  in  his  study,  remarks  that  "This  view  has  the  merit  of 
making  the  donation  [of  books  at  Branford]  intelligible."  Against  it  is 
President  Clap's  statement  that  it  occurred  a  year  previous. 


170  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

thought  that  the  Assembly  would  not  enact  one,  and  that  it 
would  prove  a  boomerang  to  both  the  college  and  the 
Colony  if  it  did.  He  strongly  advised  that  the  agitators 
drop  the  plan  for  Colony  assistance  and  humbly  ask  the 
King  and  Parliarnent  for  a  charter.  Pierson's  second 
letter,  which  he  laid  before  his  friends  at  Branford,  was 
from  Eleazar  Kimberly,  the  Secretary  of  State  of  the 
Colony.  The  Secretary  believed  that  such  a  charter  as  was 
proposed  by  them  would  be  legal.  Awaiting  Mr.  Pierson 
at  Branford  was  the  third  letter,  that  of  young  John  Eliot, 
which  has  been  mentioned.  It  had  just  arrived  by  messenger 
over  the  rough  back-country  bridle-path  from  Windsor. 
It  was  a  comprehensive  and  scholarly  lawyer's  document 
for  that  day,  replying  to  several  questions  asked  him  by  Mr. 
Pierson,  and  concluding  that  the  Colony  government  had 
every  right  to  grant  the  proposed  charter.  On  less  vital 
matters  he  averred  that  the  school  property  "for  the 
present"  should  be  in  the  hands  of  a  third  party,  to  be  dis- 
tributed by  the  trustees,  and  that,  to  avoid  notice  abroad 
and  jealousies  at  home,  the  school  should  not  attempt  to 
give  degrees. 

In  the  face  of  these  conflicting  opinions,  the  weight  of 
which,  however,  was  on  the  side  of  proceeding  with  the 
plan,  I  take  it  that  the  college  party  saw  every  reason  for 
immediate  passage  of  the  charter  by  the  Assembly.  The 
indications  are  all  to  the  effect  that  this  Branford  meeting 
of  October  2  or  3,  1701,  was  a  hurried  final  meeting  of 
the  promoters,  and  that  there,  by  a  common  agreement  to 
give  books,  the  coast-town  ministers  hoped  to  establish  an 
organization  and  property  rights  that  would  give  the  coming 
Assembly  some  precedent  to  confirm,  rather  than  a  new 
enterprise  to  establish  on  its  own  responsibility.  If  we  are 
going  too  far  to  assert  such  astuteness  on  the  part  of  the 
college  party,  the  event  undoubtedly  showed  that  this  action 


The  "Founding"  by  the  Ministers 


171 


had  been  well  taken.  While  the  actual  founding  of  the 
Collegiate  School,  under  the  permission  given  by  the  charter 
to  do  so,  came  a  month  later,  this  Branford  meeting  unques- 
tionably established  a  prior  act  of  some  kind  that  was  neces- 
sary. The  whole  question  of  the  independence  of  Yale 
College  from  the  State,  that  came  up  for  settlement  a 
generation  later,  depended  upon  the  historic  certainty  of 
this  previous  action  by  the  ministers. 


Cffi^r^ 


■/:- 


CHAPTER  V 
THE  GENERAL  ASSElMBLY  CHARTER 

I 

OUBTLESS  it  was  a  red-letter  day 
for  James  Pierpont's  good  people 
when  the  General  Assembly  gathered 
for  its  first  session  in  New  Haven  on 
October  9,  1701, 

For  the  arrival  of  the  honorable 
members  of  the  two  Houses,  the  Gov- 
ernor and  Deputy  Governor,  and  the 
usual  number  of  curious  and  interested  outsiders,  brought 
a  novel  and  exciting  week  and  taxed  the  town's  accommoda- 
tions to  the  utmost.  Probably  the  hospitable  New  Haven 
folk  opened  their  houses  for  the  official  visitors  and  guests 
and  entertained  them  in  the  generously  hospitable  manner 
of  the  day.     Scattered  farmhouses  at  that  time  dotted  the 


The  General  Assembly  Charter  173 

broad  village  lanes  on  all  of  the  eight  outer  squares,  the 
greater  number  being  on  the  southern  side,  where  there  was 
easy  access  to  the  harbor  and  that  "little  wharf"  that  jutted 
out  southeast  of  the  present  State  Street.  The  town  gaol 
and  courthouse  of  John  Davenport's  Mosaic  common- 
wealth were  still  standing  on  the  upper  Market-place,  and 
on  that  open  public  square  were  the  Meeting-house,  the 
Hopkins  Grammar  School,  and  the  village  cemetery.  The 
original  creek  up  which  John  Davenport's  colonists  had 
sailed  to  the  old  corner  of  College  and  George  Streets  was 
still  in  use.  Much  of  the  traveling  then  was  done  by  small 
sloops  and  a  convenient  way  to  come  to  New  Haven  was 
up  this  narrow  creek  to  the  town  landing-place  at  College 
Street.  But  a  short  distance  north  of  this  dock,  up  College 
Street,  about  where  the  present  Taft  Hotel  stands  at  the 
Chapel  Street  corner,  was  Captain  Miles'  Tavern.  This 
was  the  famous  old  "mansion"  of  Deputy  Governor 
Goodyear  of  Davenport's  days,  which  had  been  offered  to 
the  "college"  in  1658  as  the  "president's  house."^     It  still 

1 1  am  indebted  to  General  George  H.  Ford  of  New  Haven  both  for 
the  loan  of  a  painting  in  his  possession  of  Miles'  Tavern  (upon  which  Mr. 
Diedricksen  has  based  his  drawing  on  page  175),  and  for  some  interesting 
historical  notes  concerning  it.  This  land  originally  had  been  allotted  to 
one  William  Hawkins  of  London;  he  did  not  emigrate  and  the  lot  was 
bought  by  Deputy  Governor  Goodyear,  whose  first  New  Haven  house  was 
next  east  on  Chapel  Street.  Goodyear  built  this  house, — known  as  "the 
Mansion  house," — on  the  Hawkins  lot,  and  offered  it,  as  we  have  seen,  to 
the  New  Haven  Colony  for  a  "president's  house"  for  its  college.  After  his 
death  John  Harriman,  innkeeper,  bought  the  place,  and  managed  it  as  an 
"ordinary,"  his  son  succeeding  him.  John  Miles,  Dragoon  Captain  and  a 
New  Haven  Deputy  to  the  Assembly,  probably  kept  the  tavern  shortly  after 
1690,  and  bought  it  in  1703.  It  became  the  "Beers'  Tavern"  around  1750, 
and,  with  an  added  low  covered  porch  on  both  street  sides,  was  the  town's 
chief  hostelry  until  the  year  1850,  when  it  was  torn  down  for  the  first 
"New  Haven  House."  John  Adams  was  a  guest  here  in  1774  on  his  way 
to  the  first  Continental  Congress;  General  Washington  and  staff  stopped 
here  overnight  on  his  way  to  take  command  of  the  Continental  Army  at 
Cambridge    in    1775 ;    Mrs.    Washington    and    Mrs.    General    Gates    were 


174  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

stood  in  its  six  acres  of  pleasant  meadow  and  orchard  that 
ran  south  along  College  Street  perhaps  to  Crown,  and 
easterly  down  Chapel  nearly  to  Temple.  Joseph  Brown's 
quaint  old  map  of  1724  shows  this  house,  and  none  other, 
on  the  present  Chapel  Street  side  of  the  modern  Green 
down  to  the  corner  of  Chapel  and  Church  Streets,  where 
the  now  abandoned  Gregson  homestead  stood.  Miles' 
Tavern  must  have  been  the  chief  rendezvous  of  the  As- 
sembly during  this  first  session  at  New  Haven.  During  the 
next  Assembly  he  was  voted  £5  "to  pay  for  the  Colony  ex- 
penses in  his  house."  The  townspeople,  however,  had  pre- 
pared for  the  week's  stay  of  the  honorable  body  by  extending 
permission  to  five  other  residents  to  "Sell  Rum  only  while 
the  Court  sits."  As  there  was  then  no  other  large  public 
building  than  the  Meeting-house,  the  Deputies  seem  to  have 
met  there,  the  Council  no  doubt  sitting  in  one  of  Captain 
Miles'  upper  rooms,  where  they  could  discuss  the  public 
business  in  retirement  with  the  Governor,  and  whence  they 
would  proceed  down  across  the  public  square  to  join  the 
Deputies  in  the  Meeting-house  when  occasion  demanded. 

II 

Since  the  final  Branford  meeting,  the  week  previous,  the 
Pierpont  group  of  coast-town  ministers  had  been  anxiously 
awaiting  the  arrival  of  that  draft  of  a  charter  which  they 
had  asked  of  Judge  Sewall  and  Secretary  Addington  of 

entertained  here  that  same  year,  and  Mrs.  Washington  again  on  her  return 
journey  from  Boston;  Baron  Von  Steuben  was  here  in  1779,  and  the 
British  officers  had  a  look  in  on  its  pantry  and  wine  cellar  in  their  invasion 
of  the  town  that  year.  In  1783  Mr.  Beers  opened  a  bookshop  in  one  of  the 
first-floor  rooms,  and  rented  rooms  to  Yale  students  in  the  upper  part.  It 
later  became  a  private  residence.  The  first  "New  Haven  House"  was  built 
there  by  Mr.  Augustus  R.  Street,  of  the  Class  of  1812,  and,  on  his  death,  the 
property  was  left  by  him  for  the  support  of  the  Yale  Art  School.  The 
College  sold  the  land  in  1867,  applying  the  proceeds  to  the  Art  School  cost 
and  other  endowments  given  by  Mr.  Street. 


176  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

Boston.  This  had  not  come  when  the  Assembly  had  begun 
its  sessions  on  October  9,  and  we  may  imagine  the  college 
promoters,  who  would  naturally  have  come  to  New  Haven 
to  see  their  charter  passed,  in  a  great  to-do  over  the  delay, 
until  it  arrived  by  post  from  New  London  the  next  day.  The 
Boston  packet  was  addressed  to  the  Reverend  Buckingham, 
and  it  was  now  gone  over  by  the  ministers  at  Mr.  Pierpont's 
house  and  the  petition  which  was  to  accompany  it  written. 

This  final  discussion  of  the  charter  seems  to  have  taken 
four  or  five  days.  For  the  form  in  which  it  had  come  from 
the  Massachusetts  framers  was  not,  in  some  essential 
points,  to  the  New  Haven  ministers'  liking.  The  "Instruc- 
tions" that  had  been  sent  to  the  Boston  lawyers  had  been 
a  layman's  general  ideas  of  what  was  wanted.  The  Boston 
reply  was  not  only  a  lawyer's  codification  of  these  ideas, 
but,  in  a  few  main  matters,  to  quite  a  different  purpose  than 
the  original  New  Haven  design.  While  perhaps  a  small 
matter  in  itself,  this  difference  has  more  significance  than 
has  usually  been  assigned  to  it.  For  the  two  points  of  view 
which  had  been  at  loggerheads  over  the  college  appear  to 
be  rather  clearly  shown  thereby.  The  New  Haven  minis- 
ters' preliminary  draft  (no  copy  of  which  is  now  in  exist- 
ence) had  undoubtedly  been  quite  in  line  with  the  tradi- 
tional and  independent  Congregationalism  of  Pierpont's 
circle.  The  Boston  reply  very  emphatically  hints  of  the 
increasing  sentiment  in  the  Massachusetts  of  that  period  for 
a  stronger  church  association.  The  Pierpont  scheme  had 
been  less,  probably,  for  a  Congregational-church  school 
than  for  a  public  academy  that  would  bolster  up  the  Con- 
gregational churches  and  yet  not  be  controlled  by  them. 
It  was  possibly  because  he  did  not  have  these  original 
papers  before  him,  that  President  Clap  did  not  make  this 
clear  in  his  "Annals."  From  that  circumstance  arose  the 
flat  statements  by  President  Quincy  of  Harvard  that  the 


The  General  Assembly  Charter  177 

Massachusetts  church  leaders  not  only  began  the  Colle- 
giate School  project,  but  furnished  its  charter  for  it,  and, 
therefore,  should  be  considered  its  founders.  The  result 
of  this  has  been  some  misapprehension  of  the  facts  involved, 
in  spite  of  exhaustive  proofs  of  the  real  situation  by  such 
critics  of  President  Quincy's  "History  of  Harvard"  as  the 
late  Professor  Kingsley^  of  Yale  and  Professor  Dexter. 

Not  only  was  the  Massachusetts  church-control  theory 
shown  in  this  charter  of  Addington's;  I  surmise  that  the 
hand  of  an  influential  Connecticut  faction  may  likewise  be 
discerned  in  it.  Judge  Sewall's  diary  records  the  fact  that 
the  Rev.  Timothy  Woodbridge,  the  Hartford  minister,  was 
at  this  time  in  Boston;  says  Sewall:  "Mr.  Timothy  Wood- 
bridge  remains  here  lame  by  reason  of  a  humor  fallen  into 
his  right  leg."  This  was  written  under  date  of  October 
29,  1 70 1.  Now  the  records  of  the  First  Church  of  Hart- 
ford show^  that  Woodbridge  was  absent  from  Hartford 
for  most  of  the  year  1701  and  for  all  of  the  year  1702, 
"apparently  ill,  in  Boston."  Repeated  efforts  were  made 
to  secure  his  return  to  his  Hartford  congregation,  which  did 
not  succeed  until  February,  1703.  During  most  if  not  all 
of  this  long  absence,  Woodbridge  appears  to  have  been  ill, 
suffering  from  some  "sorrowful  circumstances  which  the 
providence  of  God  hath  laid  him  under"  (say  the  Hartford 
records).  Captain  Sewall  writes  in  his  diary  of  dining 
with  him  and  Increase  Mather  in  October,  1702.  In 
January,  1703,  Woodbridge  "Prayed  at  the  opening  of  the 

1  Professor  Kingsley's  criticism  of  Quincy  will  be  found  in  The  Ameri- 
can Biblical  Repository  for  1841.  While  successfully  demolishing  the 
Massachusetts  faction's  establishment  of  Yale,  Professor  Kingsley  un- 
doubtedly went  too  far  to  the  other  extreme,  and  denies  the  very  evident 
influence  of  the  Massachusetts  theological  uproar  of  1698-1701  on  the 
Connecticut  establishment, 

2  This  is  stated  by  the  historian  of  the  Hartford  church,  George  L. 
Walker. 


178  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

Court  at  Charlestown,"  etc.  Inasmuch  as  he  was  a  resident 
of  Boston  during  1 701-1703,  and  hence  at  hand  during  the 
period  when  Sewall  and  Addington  were  drawing  up  their 

draft     of    the     Collegiate 

J  t    (^         //      School  charter,  it  Is  entirely 

ajmUCl  (UCXV^UL  .  probable  that  he  was  con- 
sulted In  It,  and  thereby 
added  his  own  theories  as  to  the  course  Connecticut  should 
take  to  those  of  the  Massachusetts  lawyers,  with  whom,  as 
with  Mather,  he  appears  to  have  been  In  very  friendly  rela- 
tions. If  we  could  be  certain  of  this  (and  the  fact  has  not 
been  suggested  before,  to  my  knowledge),  we  have  the 
interesting  situation  that,  where  James  Pierpont  had  been 
careful  to  "found"  the  Collegiate  School  before  the  Assem- 
bly convened,  Timothy  Woodbridge  was  party  to  the  Boston 
legal  suggestion  that  the  Assembly  "found"  it,  Instead,  and 
to  the  theory  of  governmental  visitation  and  church-synod 
control  advised  by  the  Mathers. 

The  letter  from  the  two  Boston  lawyers,  accompanying 
their  charter  draft,  is  still  extant.  In  It  they  "crave  pardon" 
for  the  long  delay,  but  excuse  themselves,  both  on  the 
ground  of  many  other  duties,  and  because  of  "not  knowing 
what  to  do  for  fear  of  overdoing."  And  they  had  stumbled 
over  one  thing  especially.  This  was  that  "there  Is  no 
mention  made  [In  the  'Instructions']  of  any  visitation,  which 
Is  exceedingly  proper  and  beneficial;  all  humane  societies 
standing  in  need  of  a  check  upon  them."  This  was  exactly 
what  Pierpont  and  his  friends  had  not  wanted.  The  Boston 
men  proceeded:  "We  know  not  how  to  call  or  qualify  it, 
but  that  in  a  little  time  It  might  probably  prove  subversive 
of  your  design."  Regarding  the  School  they  said:  "We  on 
purpose  gave  your  academy  as  low  a  name  as  we  could,  that 
it  might  the  better  stand  in  wind  and  weather,  not  daring  to 
incorporate  It,  lest  It  should  be  liable  to  be  served  with  a 


The  General  Assembly  Charter  179 

writ  of  quo  warranto."  They  "should  have  traveled  further 
in  it  [they  added],  if  your  instructions  or  our  invention  had 
dictated  to  us,  not  knowing  well  what  scheme  to  project, 
because  we  could  not  tell  how  far  your  government  will 
encourage  the  design."  Sewall  and  Addington,  good  legal 
conservatives  that  they  were,  hoped  that  matters,  however, 
would  turn  out  well,  as  "We  should  be  very  glad  to  hear 
of  flourishing  schools  and  a  College  at  Connecticut,  and  it 
would  be  some  relief  to  us  against  the  sorrow  we  have  con- 
ceived for  the  decay  of  them  in  this  province."  And  they 
added,  as  a  special  urging  for  the  theological  provision  in 
their  charter,  that  "as  the  end  of  all  learning  is  to  fit  men 
to  search  the  Scriptures,"  the  "Rector  should  expound  the 
Scriptures  diligently  morning  and  evening." 

The  New  Haven  group  of  ministers,  however,  were  far 
from  being  as  fearful  of  the  illegality  of  the  act  they  were 
to  ask  for,  and  of  its  consequences,  as  were  the  Boston 
lawyers.  They  knew  their  Connecticut  better  than  that. 
They  had  taken  the  bull  by  the  horns,  if  the  Branford 
"founding"  tradition  may  be  believed,  so  far  as  any  danger 
of  asking  the  Assembly  to  ^ 

act    on    its    own    responsi-  ^^/pl/x^J'      /       /r—^ 

bility  was  concerned.     Nor    ^// C^ad/mt^/l/^^ 
were  they  in  sympathy  with   ^^ 

the  idea  of  making  their  school  as  much  of  a  theological 
seminary  as  the  two  elderly  Boston  Puritan  leaders  pro- 
posed. Their  plans  for  their  Connecticut  college  were  much 
broader  than  to  make  it  a  "school  of  the  churches"  or  a 
theological  seminary. 

I  need  not  go  into  the  very  many  changes  which  Pierpont 
now  made  in  the  Sewall  and  Addington  draft.^  But  the  main 

1  Judge  Sewall  was  informed  of  the  passage  of  the  Collegiate  School 
Act  in  letters  from  the  Trustees  which  he  refers  to  as  dated  the  "15th  and 
16th"  of  October,   1701, — references  which  give  us  the  latest  dates  for  the 


i8o  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

alterations  and  additions  need  to  be  noted,  as  they  clearly 
show  what  was  in  James  Pierpont's  mind.  The  Boston 
draft  was  "An  Act  for  Founding  a  Collegiate  School." 
Pierpont's  significant  alteration  is  to  "An  Act  for  Liberty 
to  erect  a  Collegiate  School"  (already,  we  may  thus  sur- 
mise, "founded").  The  term  "Collegiate  School"  had 
occurred  in  several  letters  of  the  earlier  fall,  and  doubtless 
had  been  accepted,  partly  because  the  enterprise  had  not 
yet  risen  to  the  dignity  of  a  "university,"  or  even  to  that  of 
a  "college"  in  the  contemporary  use  of  the  term,  and  partly 
because  it  seemed  that  caution  should  be  used  in  not  making 
too  noticeable  a  beginning.  A  further  important  element  in 
the  Boston  draft  was  omitted,  wherein  the  Westminster  Con- 
fession, as  expounded  in  Dr.  Ames'  "Medulla  Theologiae" 
(the  famous  Calvinistic  doctrinal  book  of  the  earlier  Puri- 
tan days),  was  ordered  "diligently  read  in  the  Latin  tongue, 
and  well  studied  by  all  scholars  educated  in  the  said  school." 
While  Dr.  Ames'  book  became  one  of  the  text-books  of  the 
Collegiate  School  in  good  season,  the  Pierpont  founders 
evidently  did  not  think  it  best  to  so  order  it  in  the  charter. 
In  the  concluding  paragraph,  the  Boston  draft  empowered 

passage  of  that  act.  On  October  29  he  writes  that  he  would  like  to  see  the 
charter,  "as  an  ample  Reward  for  any  thing  we  have  done  for  you."  He 
also  wants  to  know  "the  Place  where  the  College  is  to  be,  as  soon  as  you 
have  Appointed  it."  This  was  very  likely  a  matter  for  curiosity  to  Timothy 
Woodbridge,  near  Sewall,  if  not  in  his  house,  at  the  time,  and  the  question 
may  have  been  suggested  by  him.  The  Boston  judge  remained  a  good  friend 
of  the  Connecticut  academy  in  later  years.  He  sent  "five  Volumes  of  Pole's 
Synopsis  Criticorum,"  to  the  School  in  1707,  though  he  seems  to  have  had 
difficulty  in  getting  the  books  delivered.  "They  have  been  Transported 
from  Boston  to  Woodbury;  and  back  again,"  he  writes  to  the  Trustees.  "If 
it  please  God  they  get  well  to  Saybrook,  I  would  have  them  rest  there,  and 
move  no  more."  The  last  word  that  we  hear  from  him  about  the  School 
which  he  helped  establish  is  in  this  friendly  letter.  He  wishes  to  be  remem- 
bered as  "a  Wellwisher  to  the  Prosperity  of  your  College;  tho  possibly,  it 
may  import  the  less  increase  of  our  own,  I  hope  the  Interests  of  Christ's 
Kingdom  in  general,  will  be  promoted;  wch  is  that  we  should  aim  at." 


The  General  Assembly  Charter  i8i 

the  trustees  to  receive  gifts  "as  from  time  to  time  shall  be 
freely  given,"  for  "the  founding,  erecting  and  endowing  of 
the  same."  In  the  amended  draft,  Pierpont  inserted  after 
the  reference  to  the  gifts  the  phrase  "as  have  heretofore 
already  been  granted,"  for  the  "founding,"  and  so  on. 
Here  again  is  a  change  which  very  logically  points  toward 
some  preliminary  organization  and  the  giving  of  property 
to  it. 

One  other  important  alteration  in  the  Boston  draft  re- 
mains to  be  noted.  Sewall  and  Addington  had  left  the  site 
for  the  school  blank,  and  had  arranged  for  certain  "Minis- 
ters and  Gentlemen,"  unnamed  and  their  number  left  blank, 
to  become  the  "trustees."  At  the  meetings  at  Pierpont's 
house,  the  references  to  a  site  were  struck  out,  the  word 
"Gentlemen"  was  omitted,  and  the  blank  left  for  the  num- 
ber of  trustees  filled  by  inserting  the  names  of  ten  ministers : 
"The  Rev.  Mr.  James  Noyes,  of  Stonington,  Mr.  Israel 
Chauncy,  of  Stratford,  Mr,  Thomas  Buckingham,  of  Say- 
brook,  Mr.  Abraham  Pierson,  of  Killingworth,  Mr. 
Samuel  Mather,  of  Windsor,  Mr.  Samuel  Andrew,  of 
Milford,  Mr.  Timothy  Woodbridge,  of  Hartford,  Mr. 
James  Pierpont,  of  New  Haven,  Mr.  Noadiah  Russell,  of 
Middletown,  and  Mr.  Joseph  Webb,  of  Fairfield." 

Just  what  had  happened  to  produce  this  particular  list  of 
trustees  we  do  not  know.  Evidently  the  "Instructions"  of 
August  7  had  contained  no  specific  number  of  founders. 
We  have  seen  how  the  enterprise  up  to  that  time  (and,  so 
far  as  contemporary  documents  go  to  show,  up  to  October 
9)  had  been  entirely  in  the  hands  of  the  group  of  ministers 
along  the  Sound.  To  John  Eliot  on  September  17  it  had 
been  written  that  "eight  elders"  and  a  Master  were  to  be 
the  number,  evidently  two  for  each  of  the  four  counties.  It 
had  now  been  decided  to  increase  the  number  of  trustees  to 
ten.      Gurdon    Saltonstall,    of    the    original    movers,    and 


1 82  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

Samuel  Russel,  were  not  included  among  those  selected,  and 
three  new  names — Timothy  Woodbridge,  old  Samuel 
Mather,  and  Noadiah  Russell — had  been  added. 

I  fancy  that  one  conjecture  as  to  this  selection  is  as  good 
as  another.  Yet  we  are  probably  somewhere  within  the 
facts  if  (with  our  recent  acquaintance  with  the  bigwigs  of 
the  Colony  in  mind)  we  consider  that  as  matters  concerning 
the  founding  of  the  Collegiate  School  had  approached  this 
critical  pass,  and  as  the  news  of  the  proposed  founding  was 
noised  abroad,  the  traditional  jealousy  between  the  old  Con- 
necticut and  New  Haven  Colonies  had  again  broken  out, 
and  that  the  Hartford  ministers  had  come  into  the  situation, 
if  belatedly,  with  some  precipitation  and  for  purposes  of 
their  own.  Events  were  to  show  an  underlying  hostility  to 
the  Pierpont  party,  on  the  part  of  Timothy  Woodbridge, 
whose  residence  in  Boston  at  that  moment,  close  to  Sewall 
and  Addington,  must  have  been  well  known.  That  Hart- 
ford County  received  three  trustees  at  this  time,  was  likely 
enough  for  "reasons  of  state."  In  that  event,  both  Wood- 
bridge  and  Russell  were  natural  choices.  But  Samuel 
Mather  was  an  invalid,  and  never  attended  a  Collegiate 
School  trustee  meeting.  His  choice,  in  the  face  of  this  well- 
known  expectation,  could  hardly  have  been  but  for  his 
prominence  in  his  county,  his  relation  as  son-in-law  to  the 
Deputy  Governor  and  brother-in-law  to  the  Rev.  Samuel 
Andrew  of  Milford,  and  because,  by  adding  him,  such  oppo- 
sition as  was  forming  around  Hartford  to  the  Pierpont 
leadership  might  be  curbed  by  taking  in  all  of  the  chief 
objectors.  That  New  London  County  should  have  three 
was  probably  because  the  Pierpont  party  had  it  in  mind  to 
choose  Abraham  Pierson  for  the  first  Rector,  and  that  his 
place  on  the  board  of  ten  would  then  be  taken  by  another 
from  another  county,  as  was  the  case. 


The  General  Assembly  Charter  183 

But  why  the  important  selection  of  a  site,  which  naturally 
would  have  heen  incorporated  in  the  charter  under  ordinary 
conditions,  was  left  out,  is  not  so  clear.  Undoubtedly, 
however,  the  omission  points  to  this  same  collision  between 
Hartford  and  New  Haven  interests.  It  can  hardly  be 
believed  that  James  Pierpont,  following  out  in  his  mind,  as 
he  must  have  done,  the  earlier  efforts  of  his  famous  prede- 
cessor for  a  New  Haven  college,  did  not  hope,  if  not 
expect,  to  settle  the  Collegiate  School  at  New  Haven.  And 
it  is  just  as  well  established  that  the  Hartford  party  wanted 
it  there.  So  there  appears  to  have  been  a  deadlock  on  this 
question  from  the  start.  As  the  charter  was  drawn  up,  it 
would  appear  that  this  trouble  caused  both  the  omission  of 
a  site  for  the  school,  and  the  concession  to  the  Hartford 
party  of  an  extra  trustee. 

In  the  meantime,  the  Council  and  the  Lower  House  had 
been  going  about  the  regular  Colony's  business.  The  pres- 
entation of  the  tax  list  had  been  attended  to,  Hartford  and 
New  Haven  leading  and  Waterbury,  Derby,  and  Killing- 
worth  ending  the  list.  The  annual  rates  are  imposed,  two 
and  a  half  penny  a  pound,  to  be  paid  in  wheat,  pork,  etc. 
The  salaries  for  the  year  are  fixed,  the  Governor  being 
voted  £120,  though  he  has  to  pay  for  his  own  "waiting  men 
and  horses."  Each  of  the  four  counties  is  ordered  to 
maintain  "a  sufficient  gaol  or  prison  house."  It  is  decided  to 
print  fifteen  hundred  copies  of  the  Colony  laws.  A  com- 
mittee, of  which  the  Rev.  James  Noyes  of  the  College 
founders  and  young  John  Eliot  of  the  house  are  members,  is 
named  to  treat  again  with  Rhode  Island  about  the  long- 
disputed  boundary  line.  The  Colony  College  project  then 
comes  up.  The  charter,  accepted  by  the  Governor  and  his 
Council  in  agreeable  conference  at  Captain  Miles'  Tavern, 
is  now  to  go  to  the  Lower  House.  Here  its  reception  may 
have  been  considered  problematical. 


184  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

III 

We  may  fancy  ourselves  present  at  the  scene  in  the  rough 
wooden  Meeting-house  on  the  New  Haven  Market-place 
on  that  Friday  morning,  October  16,  1701,  when  we  may 
take  it  that  the  final  act  in  the  long  succession  of  efforts 
which  we  have  been  reviewing,  for  a  Connecticut  Colony 
college,  was  played  by  the  Deputies.  John  Davenport's 
persevering  spirit,  in  its  glistening  robes  of  that  realistic 
Heaven  to  which  he  had  devoutly  believed  that  he  would  go, 
may  well  have  hovered  over  that  audience  of  the  sons  of 
his  troubled  earthly  generation.  The  Meeting-house  bell 
reverberates  through  the  fresh  autumn  morning  air. 
Toward  the  four-square  clapboarded  building,  with  its  squat 
belfry  and  weather  vane  surmounting  its  four-sloped  shin- 
gled roof,  proceed  the  actors  in  this  final  drama  of  New 
Haven's  long  College  dream.  From  Captain  Miles'  Tavern, 
under  the  great  oaks  and  buttonwoods  of  the  public  square, 
comes  old  Governor  Fitz-John  Winthrop,  a  famous  dandy 
of  his  day,  in  periwig  and  gold-laced  cocked  hat,  scarlet- 
lined  coat,  lavishly-embroidered  waistcoat,  blue  silk  stockings 
and  silver-buckled  shoes.  With  him  walks  the  aged  Robert 
Treat,  now  Deputy  Governor,  in  the  sedate  white  band  and 
somber  garb  of  the  older  days.  The  ten  Assistants  come 
out  over  the  ancient  sandy  square  from  the  several  streets, 
— in  their  white  or  scarlet  square-cut  coats,  broad  skirted 
with  large  cuffs,  gold  and  silver  buttoned,  in  ruffles, — no 
doubt  discussing  with  the  ministers,  who  have  come  to  town 
to  see  the  college  charter  passed,  the  possibility  of  the 
Lower  House  concurring  in  their  own  favorable  action. 
The  Deputies  from  the  towns  of  the  Colony  saunter  over, 
doubtless  with  their  New  Haven  hosts,  the  country  dele- 
gates in  their  crude  imitations  of  the  now  somewhat  gaudy 
attire  of  the  bigwigs.  James  Pierpont,  in  his  black-crepe 
ministerial  robes  that  he  has  recently  ordered  from  Boston, 


1 86  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

and  the  charter  under  his  arm,  comes  out  of  his  parsonage 
with  Gurdon  Saltonstall  and  Abraham  Pierson  and  Thomas 
Buckingham,  and  crosses  the  Market-place  to  mingle  with 
the  audience  of  the  day's  discussion.  The  magnificently- 
garbed  Governor  goes  up  into  the  high  pulpit  which  had 
been  moved  back  into  the  addition  built  the  year  before  to 
the  Meeting-house.  The  Deputies  take  their  places;  the 
Council  scatter  about, — dignified  spectators  of  the  day's 
affairs; — the  townsfolk  and  visitors,  with  here  and  there 
a  bevy  of  great  ladies  of  the  Colony,  in  those  wigs  and 
hooped  petticoats  that  had  just  become  the  rage,  overflow 
into  the  rear  and  side  benches,  while  the  less-important 
populace  climbs  up  into  the  two  narrow  galleries.  A  minis- 
ter, possibly  James  Pierpont  by  right  of  his  local  authority, 
opens  the  session  with  prayer  and  the  business  of  the  day 
begins.^ 

The  records  of  the  Assembly's  discussions  on  this  occasion 
are  lost,  and  we  shall  have  to  depend  upon  conjecture  for 
our  view  of  what  occurred.  But  I  think  that  we  know 
enough  about  the  situation  to  venture  it.  The  clerk  calls 
for  the  Act  concerning  the  proposed  Collegiate  School,  as 

1  Attending  this  first  New  Haven  session  of  the  General  Assembly  were 
the  following:  Governor  Fitz-John  Winthrop  and  Deputy  Governor  Treat 
of  Milford;  Magistrates  Leet,  Fitch,  Mason,  Wetherell,  Stanley,  Mansfield, 
Pitkin,  Curtis,  Chester,  and  Rossiter;  and  the  following  Deputies:  Hart- 
ford— Hooker  and  Cook;  New  Haven — Osborn  and  Ailing;  W'indsor — 
Wolcott  and  Eliot;  Fairfield — Wakeraan  and  Speaker  Burr;  New  Lon- 
don— Smith  and  Hough;  Stratford — Judson  and  Coe;  Wethersfield — Treat 
and  Wells;  Guilford — Bradley  and  Fowler;  Milford — Clark  and  Peck; 
Windham — Ripley  and  Crane;  Branford — Malbie  and  Clerk  Stent;  Wal- 
lingford — Hall  and  Merriman;  Woodbury — Sherman;  Derby — Johnson  and 
Riggs;  Stamford — Waterbury  and  Holly;  Haddam — Chapman  and  Brain- 
erd;  Middletown — White  and  Sumner;  Waterbury — Judd  and  Bronson; 
Glastonbury — Smith  and  Hale;  Saybrook — Nathaniel  Lynde  and  Chapman; 
Norwich — Tracy;  Lyme — Ely  and  Peck;  Stonington — Mason  and  Saxton; 
Simsbury — Higlee  and  Wilcockson;  Killingworth — Crane  and  Lane;  Farm- 
ington — Hooker  and  Bull;  Norwalk — Messenger  and  Keeler. 


The  General  Assembly  Charter  187 

passed  by  the  Assistants.  And  he  reads  the  vigorous  pre- 
amble, or  petition/  introducing  it,  which  Pierpont  and  his 
friends  had  during  the  past  week  been  busy  upon  and  secur- 
ing signatures  to.  Then  the  Act  itself  "for  Liberty  to  erect 
a  Collegiate  School"  is  droningly  read.  The  famous 
meeting  is  open. 

Judging  from  all  the  attending  circumstances,  I  do  not 
suppose  that  a  very  serious  effort  is  made  to  side-track  the 
charter.  The  Pierpont  party  has  had  full  opportunity  from 
Tuesday  until  Friday  to  acquaint  the  leaders  in  the  House 
with  the  latest  developments  in  the  plan  of  which  they  must 
already  have  had  full  knowledge,  and  the  phrasing  of  the 
charter  no  doubt  has  been  submitted  to  them.  Yet  there 
is  opposition.  Gershom  Bulkeley's  timorous  idea  that  the 
Assembly  would  only  get  itself  into  trouble  with  the  Royal 
authority  by  granting  a  Connecticut  college  charter  un- 
doubtedly has  its  adherents,  and  we  may  believe  that  this 
is  the  first  point  raised  and  argued.  It  has,  however,  been 
thoroughly  canvassed  before  this,  and  the  Assistants  have 
expressed  their  minds  on  it,  in  passing  the  Act.  It  may  well 
have  been  left  to  Deputy  John  Eliot  to  explain  this  common 
sentiment,  as  he  had  done  in  his  letter  to  the  Branford 
meeting.    The  Colony  had  every  right  (says  Eliot,  standing 

1  This  preamble,  based  on  the  petition  already  in  circulation,  was  as 
follows: 

"W^hereas  several  well  disposed,  and  Publick  spirited  Persons  of  their 
sincere  regard  to  &  Zeal  for  upholding  &  Propagating  of  the  Christian 
Protestant  Religion  by  a  succession  of  Learned  &  Orthodox  men  have  ex- 
pressed by  Petition  their  earnest  desires  that  full  Liberty  and  Priveledge 
be  granted  unto  certain  Undertakers  for  the  founding,  suitably  endowing 
&  ordering  a  Collegiate  School  within  his  Maj*^^  Colony  of  Connecticot 
wherin  Youth  may  be  instructed  in  the  Arts  &  Sciences  who  thorough  the 
blessing  of  Almighty  God  may  be  fitted  for  Publick  employment  both  in 
Church  &  Civil  State.  To  the  intent  therefore  that  all  due  incouragement 
be  Given  to  such  Pious  Resolutions  and  that  so  necessary  &  Religious  an 
undertakeing  may  be  sett  forward,  supported  and  well  managed: — Be  it 
Enacted  by  the  Govern''  &  Company,"  etc.  etc. 


1 88  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

up  in  his  flowing  cloak)  to  charter  such  a  school,  and  such  a 
charter  could  not  be  "overthrown  by  law  regularly  exe- 
cuted," though,  of  course,  it  could  be  by  force  from  Eng- 
land,— a  contingency  that  Connecticut  wit  will  continue  to 
avoid.  He  cites  a  number  of  cases  where  the  various 
Colonial  General  Courts  have  created  and  incorporated 
societies.  He  would  admit  the  possibility  of  trouble,  both 
for  the  school  and  Colony,  as  had  been  advanced  by  pre- 
vious fearful  speakers,  if  the  projected  academy  was,  in  the 
first  place,  to  be  incorporated  outright  at  this  session,  or,  in 
the  second  place,  if  it  were  planned  on  any  grand  lines  that 
might  attract  undue  attention  abroad.  As  to  the  first  diffi- 
culty, we  may  fancy  the  young  Windsor  lawyer  saying,  it 
had  been  very  properly  avoided  by  the  fact  that  the  school 
was  already  "founded"  and  already  held  property,  at  least 
in  the  promises  of  books  from  its  promoters.  Concerning 
the  latter,  it  was  doubtless  observed  by  the  honorable  gentle- 
men of  the  Assembly  that  the  ministers  who  had  brought 
this  matter  up  had  been  most  careful  not  to  overstep  the 
bounds  of  caution.  They  had  asked  merely  for  a  charter 
for  a  school  which  should  have  no  high-sounding  name,  and 
which  should  be  presided  over  by  a  Rector  or  Master  and 
Tutors  and  Ushers  instead  of  by  officers  going  under  the 
more  magnificent  titles  at  Harvard  and  abroad.  And  the 
petition  for  it  was  signed  by  many  of  the  great  men  of 
the  Colony. 

No  doubt  some  arguments  are  made  against  proceeding 
even  under  these  promising  conditions,  on  the  ground  that 
it  were  a  rash  act  that  gave  complete  control  over  so  impor- 
tant an  enterprise  as  a  Colony  college  to  any  self-perpetuat- 
ing body  of  men,  even  if  they  were  such  men  as  the  dis- 
tinguished ministers  named.  Where  was  its  visitorial  power 
to  be  located?  And  what  influence  would  the  churches  have 
over  it?     Mr.  Woodbridge's  party  may  have  raised  this 


The  General  Assembly  Charter  189 

question.  I  fancy  that,  if  they  did,  they  were  as  easily  met. 
The  Act  deliberately  forsook  the  traditional  form  of  uni- 
versity government,  to  be  sure.  It  differed  from  Harvard 
in  that  no  resident  body  of  Fellows  or  Overseers  was  named, 
and  in  that  it  gave  the  Assembly  no  right  of  visitation.  But 
conditions  were  different  in  Connecticut  from  what  they 
were  in  Massachusetts.  The  educated  men  of  this  Colony 
were  scattered  about  among  the  towns,  where  in  Massa- 
chusetts they  were  to  a  very  considerable  degree  gathered 
in  Boston.  And  the  intention  was  to  have  the  master  of  the 
school  not  necessarily  a  trustee,  and  certainly  under  the 
control  of  the  remaining  ten  ministers,  who  therefore 
assumed,  for  the  public  at  large,  the  right  of  visitation.^ 
And  if  the  church-synod  organization  question  comes  up,  I 
imagine  that  it  is  as  easily  overthrown,  if  it  needs  any  argu- 
ments before  an  Assembly  the  leaders  of  which  are  largely 
in  sympathy  with  the  desire  of  Pierpont  and  his  friends  to 
rid  the  enterprise  of  such  an  entanglement  and  who  were 
not  yet  prepared  for  the  Saybrook  Platform.  The  plan  of 
the  founders  had  been  a  refrain  of  Davenport's  ill-fated 
earlier  college  plan,  to  establish  a      ^  j>  ^ 

Colony   school    for   the   education  ""^^    ^^^v  ^"^"^^^^^^ 
of    the    youth    in    "the    arts    and     ^  ^ 

sciences,"  and  for  "public  service  to  both  church  and  com- 
monwealth." It  was  not  alone,  or,  perhaps  especially,  to  be 
a  theological  seminary  for  the  churches. 

So,  when  the  question  is  finally  put  to  the  Assembly, 
maybe  John  Eliot  arises  again  to  draw  together  the  threads 
of  the  statement  for  the  college  promoters,  or  Speaker  Burr 
of  Samuel  Andrew's  church — speaking  from  the  chair — 
clearly  assures  the  Deputies  that  they  are  within  their  rights 

1  The  Rector  did  not  become  necessarily  a  trustee  until  the  charter  of 
1723  was  passed. 


190  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

to  act,  and  are  establishing  a  promising  educational  institu- 
tion for  their  descendants. 

The   Act    is   passed,    just    before    the    Assembly    rises, 
promptly  to  be  signed  by  the  much  belaced  Governor  at 
Captain  Miles'  hospitable  tavern  across  the  Market-place 
[  later  in  the  day.    However 

^  y^~^       important    the    passage    of 

^^jn^Cn^lfcA  —   this  Act  was  to  the  future 
yy  ■  Yale  College,  I  suppose  that 

^^  it  did  not  make  much  stir 

at  the  time.  A  group  of  the  leading  ministers  of  the  Colony 
had  established  a  school.  This  was  a  desirable  business,  and 
it  was  to  be  hoped  that  there  would  come  some  good  from  It. 
But  the  train-band  captains  and  lieutenants  and  village  gentry 
who  made  up  the  Lower  House,  were  probably  much  more 
interested  in  other  and  more  practical  things.  George  Pardee 
of  New  Haven  had  complained  that  he  wasn't  paid  suffi- 
ciently for  his  services  as  ferryman  across  the  Quinnlplac  at 
New  Haven,  and  the  House  takes  up  the  question  and  fixes 
the  rates  he  may  charge.  A  little  squabble  between  two  of  the 
towns  over  a  division  line  comes  up,  and  the  Assembly  settles 
it.  A  number  of  people  are  voted  the  right  to  take  up 
former  grants  of  town  lands,  others  are  given  patents  for 
purchases  of  land,  the  trouble  between  two  men  over  the 
distribution  of  an  estate  is  laid  over  to  the  next  Assembly, 
Israel  Chauncy  and  others  are  voted  the  authority  to  sell 
some  land  as  executors  "for  the  procuring  of  money  to 
defray  the  charge  of  curing  Thomas  Sherwood  who  Is 
lame,"  a  widow  Is  permitted  to  sell  some  land,  a  committee 
report  comes  In  on  the  division  and  boundaries  of  land  left 
to  two  brothers  between  Killingworth  and  Saybrook.  I 
suppose  that  there  was  more  interest  in  the  Assembly  in 
these  small  matters  than  there  was  in  giving  the  ministers 
the  right  to  start  a  school.     It  was  only  when  the  Assembly 


The  General  Assembly  Charter 


191 


later  awoke  to  the  possibilities  of  the  Collegiate  School  that 
it  began  to  take  a  paternal  interest  in  it. 

During  the  morning,  and  to  encourage  the  new  School 
at  its  start,  Major  John  Fitch,  of  Plainfield,  one  of  the 
Upper  House,  gave  to  the  Trustees  created  that  day, 
October  16,  1701,  637  acres  of  land  in  the  remote  town  of 
Killingly  (where  Timothy  Woodbridge  had  his  farm),  and 
a  promise  of  glass  and  nails  to  build  a  college  house. 


CHAPTER  VI 


THE  SAYBROOK  ORGANIZATION 


BOUT  three  weeks  later,  the  organi- 
I   zation  meeting  of  the  Trustees  named 
in  this  charter  of  the  Collegiate  School 
g^^i  was  held  at  Saybrook. 

I  This  old  Connecticut  town  is  today 
a  very  different  place  from  what  it 
was  in  1701.  There  were  but  few 
houses  in  the  wooded  tract  which  is 
now  Saybrook  to  the  hurried  traveler  along  the  shore,  the 
village  then  being  far  down  on  what  is  now  Old  Saybrook 
Point.  One  walks  today  through  the  broad,  elm-lined  main 
street  of  the  newer  and  upper  part  of  the  town,  between 
rows  of  substantial  old  mansions  built  during  or  just  after 
Revolutionary  times,  and  then  crosses  a  long,  sandy  stretch 
that  dips  down  to  tide-level  marshes,  to  rise  gradually  again 
to  the  Old  Saybrook  of  Thomas  Buckingham's  time.  This 
old  part  of  the  town  is  historic  soil,  where  much  had  hap- 
pened previous  to  1701.  Six  years  before  Plymouth  was 
settled,  tradition  has  it  that  Dutch  skippers  discovered  the 
strategic  advantages  of  this  neck  of  land  commanding  the 
approach  to  the  broad  Connecticut  River  and  the   fertile 


The  Saybrook  Organization  193 

farming  lands  far  up  its  banks  where  Hartford  now  is. 
It  was  a  Dutch  Amsterdam  trading  post  with  the  Indians 
until  1632,  and  was  claimed  a  purchase  by  them.  Just 
before  that  year,  Viscount  Say  and  Seal,  and  Lord  Brook, 
dissatisfied  with  the  Puritan  party  prospects  under  Charles 
I,  had  secured  the  transfer  from  Warwick  of  the  Plymouth 
claim  to  the  Connecticut  River,  and  had  offered  to  young 
John  Winthrop,  son  of  the  Massachusetts  Governor  (and 
later  to  be  Connecticut's  most  famous  Governor),  the  Gov- 
ernorship of  a  new  English  Puritan  colony  to  be  settled 
there.  Winthrop  took  charge  of  affairs  with  his  customary 
energy.  He  built  a  fort  and  manned  it  with  twenty  fighting 
men  and  guns,  just  in  time  to  head  off  a  Dutch  invasion 
belligerently  intent  upon  the  same  business.  A  surveyor 
arrived  in  1636,  and  the  town  (named  "Say-Brook"  after 
its  two  noble  patentees)  was  laid  out,  much  on  the  lines  on 
which  John  Brockett  three  years  later  was  to  survey  New 
Haven.  And  the  Winthrop  ambition  was  very  much  like 
Theophilus  Eaton's.  Say-Brook  was  to  be  a  great  com- 
mercial center.  And  it  was  to  be  more  than  that,  if  all 
traditions  are  not  astray.  It  was  to  be  a  New  England 
Puritan  colony  transcending  in  political  importance  any  of 
its  neighbors.  For  tradition  (possibly  apocryphal)  has  it 
that  there  was  good  expectation  that  a  group  of  the  great 
English  Puritans  of  that  day,  led  by  Pym  and  Hampden, 
and  including  Cromwell  and  Milton,  was  to  leave  old  Eng- 
land and  establish  a  second  commonwealth  there. 

It  was  in  view  of  these  possibilities,  so  it  is  said,  that  sur- 
veyor John  Gardiner  laid  out  Old  Saybrook  with  two  great 
central  squares,  on  which  the  Meeting-house  and  public 
buildings  were  to  be  built  in  good  time,  and  about  which 
were  to  rise  the  great  houses  of  these  important  settlers. 
A  wooden  fort  was  built  on  the  riverside, — later  to  be 
replaced  by  stone  battlements   facing  the   Sound  itself, — 


194  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

and  a  strong  palisade  was  erected  across  the  low  neck  of 
land  connecting  the  Point  with  the  mainland  to  the  north. 
Here,  no  doubt,  Eaton  dropped  anchor  on  his  way  to  look 
for  a  site  for  his  New  Haven  Colony  in  1637.  Here,  two 
years  later.  Colonel  George  Fenwick,  one  of  the  lesser 
patentees,  with  his  charming  lady,  arrived  overland  from 
New  Haven,  driving  before  him  that  herd  of  Devonshire 
cattle  the  descendants  of  which  do  the  major  service  on 
southern  Connecticut  farms  today. 

The  Winthrop  scheme  failed  completely,  however.  The 
great  Puritan  statesmen  never  arrived.  The  great  market- 
place dwindled  to  a  village  green.  Saybrook  was  sold  to 
the  Connecticut  Colony  some  five  years  later,  to  begin  that 
quiet  and  uneventful  farming  life  which  lasted  without 
anything  of  interest  happening,  except  a  very  independent 
reception  of  Andros  in  1675  when  Thomas  Buckingham 
galloped  forth  for  aid,  until  this  meeting  of  the  Collegiate 
School  Trustees  in  1701.  The  great  houses  of  the  English 
Puritan  leaders  had  never  been  built.  The  shallow  har- 
bor had  never  received  any  great  laden  English  ships. 
By  1 70 1  the  village  was  barely  one  of  the  first  dozen  towns 
of  the  twenty-two  in  the  Colony  in  tax-paying  ranking,  and, 
in  spite  of  its  contemporary  importance  as  the  strategic 
defense  of  the  Connecticut  River  towns,  gained  perhaps  all 
of  its  standing  in  the  Colony  because  of  the  character  and 
energy  of  Thomas  Buckingham,  its  Congregational  minister. 
His  parsonage  faced  the  village  green  of  Gardiner's  origi- 
nal layout,  and  was  not  far  from  the  fort  and  training- 
grounds  which  were  still  in  order  against  a  foreign  invader. 
Perhaps  not  over  thirty  farmhouses  were  scattered  about 
the  Meeting-house,  among  their  elms  and  gardens  and 
orchards,  when  the  Trustees  of  the  new  Collegiate  School 
rode  into  town  on  that  November  morning  in  1701  to 
organize  the  Colony  Collegiate  School. 


1 1  j-.i—^^. 


zz^ 


iM!0 


196  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

II 

This  meeting  was  held  beginning  Tuesday,  November  11, 
a  little  under  a  month  after  the  successful  passage  of  the 
charter. 

Six  of  the  ten  Trustees  named  in  that  Act  joined  Thomas 
Buckingham  at  his  Saybrook  parsonage  at  this  time.  Israel 
Chauncy  of  Stratford,  with  young  Joseph  Webb  of  Fair- 
field, riding  over  on  horseback,  doubtless  pick  up  Samuel 
Andrew  at  Milford  and  James  Pierpont  at  New  Haven,  and 
the  elderly  Abraham  Pierson  when  they  canter,  followed 
on  horseback  by  their  men-servants  or  slaves,  into  old  Kill- 
ingworth  Street.  Little  Noadiah  Russell  rides  briskly 
down  the  picturesque  Connecticut  Valley  bridle-path  from 
Middletown.  Timothy  Woodbridge  did  not  come  to  this 
meeting  (as  he  had  not  to  the  previous  two  sessions),  being 
still  detained  by  the  "humor  in  his  right  leg"  at  Boston. 
The  third  Hartford  County  Trustee,  old  Samuel  Mather 
of  Windsor,  sent  his  regrets  (the  first  of  a  long  series,  by 
the  way),  as  did  James  Noyes  of  Stonington.  The  latter 
wrote  that  he  was  not  able  to  do  much  for  the  School,  and 
plaintively  suggested  that  Gurdon  Saltonstall  undertake  for 
him  the  necessary  drumming  up  of  scholars  in  New  London 
County  that  might  fall  to  his  lot  to  secure.  His  brother, 
Moses,  of  Old  Lyme  across  the  river,  might  be  with  the 
Trustees  in  his  place,  writes  James  Noyes,  but  we  do  not 
know  that  he  was.  This  meeting,  at  which  the  legal  "found- 
ing" of  the  Collegiate  School  was  to  be  the  business  in  hand, 
thus  appears  again  to  have  been  attended  (with  the  excep- 
tion of  one  newcomer, — Noadiah  Russell)  by  none  except 
the  original  leaders  of  the  Long  Island  coast  villages,  though 
Samuel  Russel  of  Branford  apparently  did  not  appear. 

Three  days  were  given  by  the  Trustees  present  at  this 
meeting  to  a  thorough  effort  to  estabhsh  their  School,  the 


The  Saybrook  Organization  197 

three  important  actions  in  which  were  to  be  the  choice  of  a 
site  and  of  a  Rector  and  the  setting  up  of  rules  of  govern- 
ment for  the  scholars. 

We  may  permit  ourselves  a  glimpse  at  the  little  group  of 
periwigged  and  black-gowned  ministers  who  now  gathered 
about  the  great  table  before  Mr.  Buckingham's  hearth-fire, 
which  no  doubt  was  blazing  to  keep  out  the  penetrating  cold 
of  the  first  of  the  wintry  gales  from  the  Sound.  At  the  head 
of  the  table  no  doubt  sits  Buckingham  himself,  his  white 
hair  framing  a  strong  face  under  his  ministerial  black  cap. 
About  the  table  are  the  other  founders :  Israel  Chauncy, 
now  close  to  sixty,  pleasant-faced  and  kindly ;  Joseph  Webb, 
with  ever-ready  pleasantries  if  the  need  comes,  but  strong 
for  authority  to  be  vested  in  the  board;  Samuel  Andrew, 
cultivated  gentleman,  perhaps  not  too  energetic,  yet  keen  of 
eye  and  full  of  enthusiasm  for  the  college  project;  the  little 
Middletown  minister,  peering  up  from  his  great  chair  and 
very  much  alive  to  any  action  which  might  not  meet  with 
the  approval  of  the  absent  Woodbridge  and  Mather; 
James  Pierpont,  the  scribe  of  the  meeting,  handsome  and 
charming-mannered,  his  brown  curly  hair  falling  over  his 
shoulders,  the  papers  having  to  do  with  the  business  in  hand 
before  him;  and  the  broad-shouldered  Abraham  Pierson 
(they  commonly  called  it  "Person"  in  those  days),  probably 
the  largest  man,  physically,  of  the  group,  slow  of  manner 
and  quiet,  but  keenly  interested,  owing  to  the  developments 
which  he  anticipated,  in  every  act  of  the  meeting. 

The  first  business  is  to  hear  James  Pierpont  read  the 
charter  which  the  General  Assembly  had  passed,  granting 
in  the  language  of  the  founders  themselves  "a  Liberty,  and 
privilege,  for  the  founding,  suitably  endowing  and  ordering 
a  Collegiate  School,  within  his  Majesty's  Colony  of  Con- 
necticut, wherein  youth  may  be  instructed  in  the  arts  and 
sciences,  who  through  the  blessing  of  Almighty  God  may  be 


198  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

fitted  for  public  employment  both  in  church  and  civil  state." 
The  seven  ministers,  most  of  whom  had  informally 
"founded"  the  school  at  Branford  before  the  Assembly 
convened,  now  formally  made  themselves  legal  Trustees 
under  the  Colony's  charter  by  accepting  the  service  and 
giving  books  to  a  library,  which  books  no  doubt  were  now 
laid  actually  upon  the  table.^  Thus  organized,  the  board 
proceeded  to  the  three  main  problems  before  it. 

1  The  resolutions  adopted  by  the  Trustees  at  this  opening  meeting 
referred  to  their  project  of  establishing  a  Connecticut  Colony  school,  as 
follows:  "Whereas  it  was  the  glorious  publick  Design  of  our  now  blessed 
Fathers,  in  their  Remove  from  Europe  into  these  Parts  of  America,  both  to 
plant,  and  (under  the  Divine  Blessing)  to  propagate  in  this  Wilderness 
the  blessed  reformed  Protestant  Religion,  in  the  Purity  of  its  Order  and 
Worship;  not  only  to  their  Posterity,  but  also  to  the  barbarous  Natives:  In 
which  great  Enterprize  they  wanted  not  the  Royal  Commands  and  Favour 
of  his  Majesty  King  Charles  the  Second,  to  authorize  and  invigorate  them. 

"We  their  unworthy  Posterity,  lamenting  our  past  Neglects  of  this 
grand  Errand,  and  sensible  of  the  equal  Obligations,  better  to  prosecute  the 
same  End,  are  desirous  in  our  Generation  to  be  serviceable  thereunto. 

"Whereunto  the  religious  and  liberal  Education  of  suitable  Youth  is, 
under  the  Blessing  of  God,  a  chief  and  most  probable  Expedient.  Therefore, 
that  we  might  not  be  wanting  in  cherishing  the  present  observable  and  pious 
Disposition  of  many  well-minded  People,  to  dedicate  their  Children  and 
Substance  unto  God  in  such  a  good  Service:  And  being  ourselves,  with 
sundry  other  Reverend  Elders,  not  only  desired  by  our  Godly  People, 
to  undertake  as  Trustees,  for  erecting,  forming,  ordering  and  regu- 
lating a  Collegiate  School,  for  the  Advancement  of  such  an  Education:  But 
having  also  obtained  of  our  present  religious  Government,  both  full  Liberty 
and  Assistance,  by  their  Donations  to  such  an  Use:  Tokens  likewise  that 
particular  Persons  will  not  be  wanting  in  their  Beneficence:  Do,  in  Duty 
to  God,  and  the  Weal  of  our  Country,  undertake  in  the  aforesaid  Design. 
And  now  being  met,  according  to  the  Liberties  and  Aids  granted  to  us  for 
the  Use  aforesaid;  do  order  and  appoint,  that  there  shall  be,  and  hereby  is 
erected  and  formed  a  Collegiate  School,  wherein  shall  be  taught  the  liberal 
Arts  and  Languages,  in  such  Place  or  Places  in  Connecticut,  as  the  said 
Trustees  with  their  Associates  and  Successors,  do  or  shall,  from  Time  to 
Time,  see  Cause  to  order." 

After  which  salutation,  the  "Rules"  of  the  School  are  decided  upon, 
"according  to  the  laudable  Order  and  Usage  of  Harvard  College,"  etc. 


The  Saybrook  Organization  199 

The  question  of  a  site  and  the  choice  of  the  Rector  were 
of  such  closely  connected  significance  that  I  presume  they 
were  discussed  together  and  agreed  upon  perhaps  only  at 
the  end  of  the  session.  During  this  three-days  discussion 
other  and  comparatively  minor  matters  were  doubtless 
passed  upon  first.  It  was  decided,  for  one  thing,  that  the 
Rector  (who  was  not  necessarily  to  be  one  of  the  Board) 
and  Tutors  should  remain  in  office  only  under  good  be- 
havior. No  scholar  was  to  be  expelled  except  by  a  quorum 
of  the  Trustees  acting  with  the  Rector  (we  may  suppose 
that  Joseph  Webb,  still  smarting  a  bit  under  his  Sophomore 
Harvard  experience,  had  a  good  deal  to  say  about  this) .  In 
the  matter  of  admission  requirements,  the  Trustees  imme- 
diately decided  that  they  themselves  should  not  be  bothered 
with  such  matters.  Entrance  to  the  Collegiate  School 
was  to  depend  wholly  upon  a  reading  knowledge  of  the 
classics.  The  Rector,  with  the  help  of  any  conveniently- 
reached  neighboring  minister,  was  therefore  empowered  to 
examine  candidates  as  they  offered  themselves  at  odd  times 
during  the  year,  "and,  finding  them  duly  prepared  and  expert 
in  Latin  and  Greek  authors,  both  poetic  and  oratorical,  as 
also  making  good  Latin,"  should  let  them  in.  As  to  the 
regular  educational  business  of  the  school,  the  Rector  was 
now  instructed  to  teach  theological  divinity,  but  in  no  other 
system  than  the  Trustees  permitted;  the  Assembly's  Latin 
Catechism  was  to  be  recited  weekly  and  expounded  by  the 
Rector  as  was  Dr.  Ames'  "Theological  Theses," — the 
Trustees  thereby  following  the  Boston  suggestion  which 
they  had  not  cared  to  incorporate  in  the  charter  itself;  the 
Scriptures  were  ordered  read  daily,  both  at  morning  and 
evening  prayers,  and  by  the  scholars  "as  at  Harvard,"  and 
on  Sabbath  days  the  Rector  was  to  expound  practical 
divinity  or  have  the  students  repeat  sermons.  The  con- 
temporary Harvard  curriculum  was  ordered  followed,  so 


200 


The  Beginnings  of  Yale 


far  as  the  needs  of  the  infant  school  permitted;  the  first,  or 
Arts  degree,  was  set  at  the  end  of  four  years'  resident  study, 
and  the  second,  or  Master's,  three  years  afterwards;  the 
tuition  charge  was  made  thirty  shillings  a  year  for  under- 
graduates and  ten  shillings  for  graduate  students.  For  the 
time  being,  and  until  the  Trustees  could  be  assured  of  no 
interference  with  the  School  from  England,  there  were  to  be 
no  public  "Commencements,"  and  during  that  time  the 
School  term  might  be  shortened  to  three  years. 


Ill 

The  all-important  matter  of  a  site  and  choice  of  Rector 
now  came  to  a  decision. 

It  would  appear  that  these  two  matters  had  been 
thoroughly  canvassed  before  this  organization  meeting,  as 


The  Saybrook  Organization  201 

they  naturally  would  have  been  almost  from  the  very 
beginning  of  the  College  discussion.  And  from  what 
happened  at  this  meeting,  I  should  think  that  the  result 
had  been  pretty  thoroughly  understood  in  advance.  There 
were,  as  I  have  shown,  two  factions  among  the  Trustees 
who  had  been  named  in  the  charter.  The  Hartford  mem- 
bers,— taken  into  the  scheme  as  it  came  to  a  conclusion, — 
with  the  possible  addition  of  Moses  Noyes  and  Thomas 
Buckingham,  were  probably  opposed  to  the  very  natural 
desire  of  Pierpont's  New  Haven  group  that  the  college 
should  be  begun  in  the  latter  village.^  Nor  would  the  sea- 
coast-town  ministers  agree  on  Hartford.  The  agitation  for 
a  permanent  settlement  at  Hartford,  which  began  almost 
immediately  after  this  meeting,  would  go  to  show  that 
little  Noadiah  Russell,  the  only  representative  of  that 
county  at  the  Saybrook  meeting,  undoubtedly  pressed  it  as 
his  county's  claim  (which  was  based  on  Hartford's  known 
preeminence  in  population  and  wealth  over  the  remaining 
towns).  Against  New  Haven,  and  doubtless  for  Saybrook 
as  a  compromise,  were  Noyes  and  Buckingham,  at  this  time 
probably  supported  from  the  outside  by  Saltonstall  and 
Governor  Winthrop.  I  judge  that  the  Trustees  from  the 
western  seacoast  towns  were  for  New  Haven,  as  they 
certainly  were  steadily  opposed  throughout  the  later  agita- 
tion to  Hartford. 

As  the  settlement  of  this  question  was  bound  up  in  the 
selection  of  a  Rector,  we  may  take  it  that  the  decision  was 
again  postponed  until  that  choice  was  made. 

1  Samuel  Mather  had  written  to  his  fellow  Trustees,  on  October  27,  1701, 
that  he  had  been  ill,  but  that  he  was  much  interested  in  the  School.  As  to 
the  site,  he  was  then  for  New  Haven,  as  he  says:  "My  mind  is  fully  fixt  in 
that  New-haven  Town  Plat  is  ye  best  place  for  such  a  Schole.  I  have  not 
been  able  as  yet  to  discourse  ye  neighbouring  ministers  concerning  yt  matter." 
This  was  the  last  we  hear  of  the  Windsor  Trustee's  preference  for  New 
Haven.  After  Timothy  Woodbridge  had  "discoursed"  him,  we  find  him 
enrolled  by  Woodbridge  on  the  Hartford  side. 


202  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

As  this  question  came  to  the  front,  James  Pierpont's 
leadership  now  again  asserted  itself.  In  a  memorandum  in 
his  handwriting  concerning  this  meeting,  we  have  not  only 
a  list  of  things  to  be  done  (all  of  which  were  carried  out  and 
to  the  effect  above  narrated)  but  we  have  the  significant 
entry,  "to  provide  if  Mr.  Plerson  refuse."  This  memoran- 
dum clearly  shows  that  James  Pierpont  had  had  Abraham 
Pierson  in  mind  for  the  Rectorship,  and  likewise  suggests 
that  Mr.  Pierson  had  been  approached  on  the  matter  and 
had  not  fully  decided  about  it. 

The  election  of  Yale's  first  Rector  began,  however,  with 
a  complimentary  vote  for  Israel  Chauncy,  the  son  of  Presi- 
dent Chauncey  of  Harvard  and  a  well-known  scholar  him- 
self. This  was  as  gracefully  declined  by  that  now  aged 
minister,  and  Pierson's  name  seems  to  have  at  once  been 
introduced. 

In  the  succeeding  chapter  I  shall  gather  together  what  we 
know  of  this  Killingworth  minister.  As  we  have  seen,  he 
had  been  among  the  earliest  promoters  of  the  College  plan 
and  had  taken  the  lead  in  securing  Connecticut  opinions  on 
the  validity  of  the  charter  for  the  Branford  meeting  earlier 
in  the  fall.  While  others  of  the  Trustees,  especially  those 
from  Hartford  County,  had  been  chosen  for  their  town  and 
sectional  representation  as  much  as  for  anything  else,  Mr. 
Pierson's  little  farming  community  (it  was  far  down  on  the 
Colony  tax-list,  and  a  mere  village)  brought  him,  no  such 
distinction,  and  he  had  been  made  a  Trustee  wholly  on  his 
own  account.  Yet  he  undoubtedly  had  demurred  when  the 
proposition  had  been  made  to  him  by  Pierpont,  because  he 
did  not  wish  to  leave  his  people.  Reserving  his  full  accept- 
ance of  the  first  Rectorship  of  the  Collegiate  School  until  a 
second  meeting  of  the  Trustees,  to  be  held  at  New  Haven 
the  following  April,  Abraham  Pierson  settled  the  question 
temporarily  by   at   least   not   refusing   it.     The   Saybrook 


The  Saybrook  Organization  203 

meeting  now  adjourned  to  April  in  New  Haven,  and,  when 
that  meeting  was  held, — very  likely  at  James  Pierpont's 
house, — Pierson  formally  accepted,  saying  that  he  "durst  not 
refuse  such  a  service  for  God  and  his  generation,  but  sub- 
mitted himself  to  take  the  charge  and  work  of  Rector  upon 
him." 

The  expectation  that  he  would  do  this,  and  that  he  would 
agree  to  remove  to  Saybrook,  had  led  the  Trustees  to  vote 
to  settle  the  Collegiate  School  at  that  town,  and  to  name  as 
Treasurer  one  of  its  leading  citizens,  Nathaniel  Lynde. 
But  he  had  either  declined  or  had  immediately  resigned,  and 
Richard  Rosewell,  a  newly-settled  West  India  merchant  in 
James  Pierpont's  distant  New  Haven  congregation,  had 
taken  his  place.  Upon  Rosewell's  death  shortly  afterwards, 
Judge  John  Ailing,  another  New  Haven  merchant,  was 
elected.  Judge  Ailing,  whose  blacksmith  shop  probably 
stood  on  the  west  side  of  the  present  Church  Street,  just 
south  of  Crown,  had  been  Town  Recorder  for  twenty  years, 
a  Deputy  in  the  Assembly  from  New  Haven,  a  Councilor, 
Judge  of  Probate  and  of  the  County  Court,  and  was  for  the 
next  fifteen  years  to  be  the  Collegiate  School's  financial 
manager.  One  further  election  ended  the  legal  proceedings 
of  the  Saybrook  meeting.  Upon  the  election  of  Abraham 
Pierson  as  Rector,  the  Trustees  chose  Samuel  Russel  as  a 
trustee,  and  thus  all  three  of  the  original  movers  for  the 
Collegiate  School  began  service  together  as  its  trustees. 

After  the  Saybrook  meeting  Thomas  Buckingham  sent  a 
letter  to  Governor  Fitz-John  Winthrop  at  New  London, 
whose  interest  in  the  enterprise  had  been  a  prime  factor  in 
its  success  up  to  this  time.  The  Saybrook  minister  is  evi- 
dently elated.  Says  he,  "A  very  comfortable,  unanimous 
meeting  was  had,  very  well  agreeing  upon  the  person,  who 
under  the  name  of  Rector  might  preside  in  and  take  charge 
of  sd  school  (viz.  the  Revmd  Mr,  Pierson).    Wee  also  had 


204 


The  Beginnings  of  Yale 


no  great  difficultie  about  the  place  (viz.)  Say-Brook  (in 
case  no  considerations  come  in  to  alter  our  thoughts),  that 
appearing  to  be  the  place  for  the  best  accommodation  of  the 
Colonies  in  generall,  and  adjacent  places."  And  he  then 
reports  the  final  action  of  the  Trustees,  in  having  left  a 
letter  "with  mee  to  the  people  of  Killingworth,"  which  he 
has  delivered,  and  the  reply  to  which  he  has  had,  "the 
summe  of  which  is  that  they  do  not  see  it  their  duty  to 
consent  to  the  parting  with  Mr.  Pierson."  In  that  ambigu- 
ous state  the  question  of  Abraham  Pierson's  residence  at 
the  headquarters  of  the  Collegiate  School  was  to  be  left, 
until,  as  we  shall  see,  unexpected  circumstances  were  to 
solve  it,  as  the  Trustees  themselves  and  Rector  Pierson 
never  were. 

What  kind  of  a  man  this  first  Rector  of  Yale  was,  and 
what  his  life-surroundings  had  been  until  this  time,  I  may 
now  digress  a  bit  to  chronicle. 


trs: 


'ffofin 


^Tvinffiro 


Tofiam  zrierson  s 


HVainscoT  Chair\ 


CHAPTER  VII 


ABRAHAM  PIERSON 


HE  Pierson,  or  Pearson,  family,  of 
I  which  the  Collegiate  School's  first 
•J  Rector  was  a  member,  was  of  an 
ancient  yeomanry  stock  in  Yorkshire, 
iJ  England.  The  father,  Abraham  Pier- 
i|^  son.  Senior,  was  an  early  17th  Century 
g  Cambridge  University  man,  and  had 
l".il^  taken  Church  of  England  orders  at 
about  the  time  that  John  Davenport  had  fled  to  Holland. 
By  1639,  he,  with  other  advanced  Puritans,  had  found  Arch- 
bishop Laud  hostile  to  his  continuance  in  the  Church.  An 
intensely  religious  man,  he  had  at  that  time  been  forced  into 
that  extreme  group  of  Separatists  which  Davenport  had 
joined.  He  had  emigrated  to  Boston,  where  for  a  time  he 
was  an  assistant  in  the  primitive  Meeting-house  of  John 


2o6  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

Wilson,  and  supplied  the  pulpits  of  neighboring  churches,  in- 
cluding Lynn.  The  exiled  John  Wheelwright,  brother-in- 
law  of  the  famous  Mrs.  Anne  Hutchinson,  was  then  minister 
at  Exeter;  the  Massachusetts  Puritan  church  was  at  this 
time,  as  we  have  seen,  beginning  its  long  effort  to  stamp 
out  heresies,  both  political  and  religious.  As  a  result, 
several  groups  of  people  were  leaving  its  jurisdiction, — 
Thomas  Hooker  among  them, — to  found  more  attractive 
Puritan  colonies  elsewhere.  Pierson,  finding  his  own  ideas 
as  to  church  government  much  more  rigid  than  those  of  the 
Boston  leaders,  left  Lynn  with  his  bride  in  1641  for  South- 
ampton, L.  L,  taking  sixteen  people  with  him  as  a  congre- 
gation of  his  own,  and  there  establishing  a  primitive  settle- 
ment about  his  own  Meeting-house.  Three  years  later  this 
district  was  annexed  to  Thomas  Hooker's  new  Connecticut 
Colony,  and  Pierson,  unable  to  agree  with  Hooker's  broad 
political  ideas,  again  moved,  this  time  to  Branford,  where, 
several  years  later,  he  brought  his  congregation  into  John 
Davenport's  newly  organized  New  Haven  Jurisdiction  and 
thus  found  himself  finally  in  a  Puritan  colony  with  the  theo- 
logical views  and  civil  government  of  which  he  was  in  full 
and  even  violent  sympathy.  To  these  views  the  elder  Pier- 
son was  to  give  a  lifelong  attachment  and  to  be  the  last  to 
uphold  them  on  New  World  soil. 


II 

It  was  either  in  the  last  year  at  Southampton,  or  in  the 
first  at  Branford,  that  Abraham  Pierson  the  younger  was 
born.*    It  was  a  crude  enough  wilderness  in  which  to  bring 

1  Abraham  Pierson's  birthplace  is  unknown.  The  antiquarian  Savage 
fixes  it  in  1641  at  Lynn.  His  gravestone  in  the  modern  Clinton,  then  Killing- 
worth,  would  indicate  that  he  was  born  in  1646,  at  which  time  his  father 
had  moved  to  Branford. 


Abraham  Pierson  207 


up  a  family  of  children.^  Fertile  meadows  swept  down  from 
the  village  center  to  the  narrow  harbor,  but  on  all  other 
sides  the  settlement  was  hedged  in  by  forests  and  low  hills, 
in  which  were  the  poverty-stricken  villages  of  the  Indians. 
A  five-mile  fence,  or  palisade,  had  originally  enclosed  the 
settlement,  for  the  usual  Colonial  purpose  of  keeping  out 
wolves  and  Indians,  and  young  Abraham  Pierson  must  have 
grown  up  as  a  youngster  under  its  great  posts  and  high 
palings.  Tradition  has  it  that  the  first  Meeting-house  was 
built  of  logs  and  surrounded  by  high  cedar  stakes.  This  and 
the  planters'  homes  were  built  nearer  the  waterside  than  the 
present  Branford  center,  and  on  what  is  now  known  as 
Branford  Point.  If  so,  the  rugged  shores  of  the  present 
Indian  Neck  and  the  sand  beaches  at  the  Point  must  have 
been  the  playground  of  the  Pierson  children.  Much  of  this 
territory  was  bought  directly  by  the  church  from  the  Indians; 
Indian  Neck,  so  called,  and  other  shore  land  to  the  east,  is 
still  owned  by  the  Branford  Congregational  Church,  and 
rented  under  century-long  leases  to  the  large  summer  colony 
that  now  occupies  this  most  picturesque  part  of  the  Con- 
necticut coast  line. 

The  London  corporate  society  for  the  conversion  of  these 
unfortunate  'Amerinds"  was  then  becoming  active,  and  the 
elder  Pierson,  working  under  this  society  and  the  New 
Haven  confederation,  undertook  to  bring  the  Branford 
Indians  into  the  Calvinistic  fold.  No  doubt  the  young 
Abraham  Pierson  sat  behind  his  father's  chair  many  times 
when  the  natives  trooped  speechlessly  in, — as  they  had  a 
habit  of  doing  throughout  New  England, — to  squat  on  the 

1  Two  younger  brothers,  Thomas  and  John,  and  a  sister,  Abigail,  were 
brought  over  from  Southampton  with  the  family.  Abigail, — "my  choice  and 
precious  daughter,"  wrote  the  old  father  later  in  his  life, — was  to  marry 
John  Davenport's  son  and  become  the  mother  of  the  Rev.  James  Pierpont's 
first  wife. 


2o8  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

minister's  oak-slab  floor  or  stone  hearth,  and  listen  to  his 
unintelligible  exhortations.  The  elder  Pierson  drew  up  a 
catechism  for  these  natives,  which  came  to  the  attention  of 
the  London  Commissioners  in  1656  and  which  was  printed. 

Young  Abraham  Pierson  probably  received  his  early 
education  in  English  and  Latin  from  his  father  in  the  family 
circle^  and  then,  so  tradition  has  it,  at  John  Davenport's 
stern  hands,  in  New  Haven,  where  he  may  very  well  have 
been  one  of  the  few  outside  scholars  in  John  Bowers'  log 
schoolhouse  on  the  public  square,  as  he  was  finally  prepared 
for  Harvard  by  Jeremiah  Peck.  When  he  was  about  four- 
teen, young  Pierson, — with  his  Latin  books  and  broad- 
brimmed  rabbit's-fur  cap,  homespun  clothes  and  leather 
breeches, — went  to  Harvard,  where  he  became  one  of  a 
class  of  five  boys  under  the  mild  yet  rigidly-conservative 
President  Chauncey.  There  he  spent  four  years  imbibing 
the  traditional  Calvinistic  theology  of  the  Harvard  of  that 
time  and  a  crude  scientific  education.^  Among  his  class- 
mates in  1668  at  Harvard  was  young  John  Prudden,  the  son 
of  that  Rev.  Peter  Prudden  who  had  been  the  first  minister 
at  Milford,  and  very  likely  a  boyhood  friend  of  Pierson's 
at  the  New  Haven  School.  Upon  their  graduation  from 
Harvard,  the  two  chums  returned  to  Milford  together, — 
the    Pierson   home    in    Branford    having   been    moved    to 

1  Another  son,  Theophilus,  and  four  daughters  were  born  into  the 
Pierson  family  during  the  Branford  days.  Rebecca,  the  youngest  of  these 
girls,  was  later  to  marry  Joseph  Johnson,  son  of  the  tavern  keeper  at 
Newark,  from  whose  uncle  was  to  descend  the  famous  Doctor  Samuel 
Johnson,  tutor  in  Yale  College  at  New  Haven  and  later  Episcopalian  minis- 
ter and  first  president  of  King's  College,  New  York,  which  was  afterwards 
to  become  Columbia  University. 

2  Physics  seems  to  have  been  a  favorite  study  of  the  younger  Abraham 
Pierson.  A  Latin  notebook,  taken  down  in  his  classes  at  Harvard,  in  his 
handwriting,  is  now  in  the  Yale  Library,  and  he  composed  a  crude  text-book 
on  the  subject  which,  the  story  is,  was  used  in  manuscript  for  many  years 
in  early  Yale. 


Abraham  Pierson  209 


Newark, — and  here  for  about  a  year  they  studied  theology 
together  under  the  tutorship  of  the  village  minister,  Rev. 
Roger  Newton,  as  was  the  custom  of  the  day.  Young  Pier- 
son,  however  serious-minded  he  must  have  been,  imme- 
diately tumbled  head  over  heels  in  love  with  one  of  the 
village  girls^  and  was  married  to  her  in  1673. 

It  had  been,  curiously  enough,  in  the  same  year  that  old 
John  Davenport,  a  disappointed  man,  was  leaving  his 
shattered  New  Haven  theocracy  for  Boston,  defeated  in  his 
untiring  efforts  to  found  a  theocratic  republic  and  a  Puritan 
college  in  the  New  Haven  Colony,  that  young  Abraham 
Pierson,  fresh  from  the  old  man's  teaching  and  from  Har- 
vard, was  coming  back  to  the  same  scene  where,  three 
decades  later,  he  was  to  be  one  of  the  founders  and  the  first 
Rector  of  that  college  which  Davenport  had  done  so  much 
to  pave  the  way  for,  and  which  he  was  never  to  see.  But  in 
1668  this  may  well  have  seemed  an  improbable  enough 
outcome.  Independent  New  Haven  had  been  coerced  into 
joining  the  more  liberal  Connecticut  Colony  at  Hartford, 
the  old  New  Haven  Jurisdiction  had  been  swept  away,  and 
the  supporters  of  the  defeated  Davenport  scheme  in  Bran- 
ford  and  Milford  and  New  Haven  were  moving  their  homes 
to  Newark,  where  the  elder  Pierson  was  to  rebuild  the 
pillars  of  the  fallen  church  and  establish  another  theocracy 
on  the  old  New  Haven  lines.  Young  Pierson  for  the  moment 
fell  in  with  this  new  Puritan  enterprise,  as  the  year  1670  sees 
him  the  assistant  to  his  father  in  the  Newark  church,  and 

1  This  was  the  vivacious  Abigail  Clark,  daughter  of  George  Clark,  one 
of  Milford's  first  settlers.  Her  sister,  Sarah,  became  the  mother  of  that 
future  Governor  Lav?  of  the  Connecticut  Colony  who  in  1745  came  to 
President  Clap's  support  and  secured  the  passage  of  the  first  great  charter 
of  Yale  College.  The  two  Clark  girls  were  leaders  in  Milford  youthful 
society,  and,  so  the  story  goes,  used  to  sing  a  topical  song  of  the  day  while 
spinning  in  a  room  in  the  Treat  house  in  Milford  that  hugely  amused  the 
Regicides,  Whalley  and  Goffe,  who  were  hidden  underneath  in  the  cellar. 


2IO  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

three  years  later  bringing  Abigail  Clark  of  Milford  there  as 
his  bride. 

For  the  next  twenty-two  years,  Abraham  Plerson  the 
younger  was  to  be  occupied  In  carrying  on  the  primitive 
church  work  of  this  second  Davenport  theocracy  until  the 
time  came  when  he,  too,  found  himself  less  and  less  in  sym- 
pathy with  the  New  Haven  scheme  and  in  turn  abandoned 
It.  The  Newark  life  of  those  days,  and  a  little  of  Abraham 
Plerson's  part  in  it,  emerge  from  the  records  that  have 
come  down  to  us.^  It  is  a  primitive  enough  life,  as  we  may 
trace  it  through  these  early  documents.  On  his  settling 
there,  young  Pierson  takes  a  small  cabin  in  the  northwest 
section  of  the  village,  fronting  a  little  stream  that  runs 
parallel  to  the  Passaic  and  a  few  rods  from  It  through  the 
rough-built  settlement.  His  salary,  as  his  father's  assistant. 
Is  at  first  £30,  to  be  Increased  to  £40  two  years  later,  with 
lands  given  him  on  condition  that  he  remain  there  "a  con- 
siderable time."  He  now  moves  into  more  commodious 
quarters,  taking  the  widow  Ward's  "dwelling-house,  well, 
yard,  barn,  garden,  and  orchard,  with  one  acre  and  three 
rods  of  land."  By  this  transaction  he  also  becomes  the 
possessor  of  some  of  the  furniture  of  the  widow  Ward's 
house,  "one  great  wainscot  chair,  one  chest,  two  hogsheads, 
one  kneading  and  two  joint  stools,  formerly  belonging  to 
Lawrence  Ward  (of  New  Haven)  deceased."^     For  seven 

1 A  good  deal  of  light  is  thrown  upon  these  years  of  Rector  Pierson's 
life  by  the  Newark  Town  Records,  published  by  the  New  Jersey  Historical 
Society.  There  is  more  or  less  about  him  in  the  Rev.  Mr.  Stearns'  very 
lucid  lectures  on  the  history  of  the  First  Church  of  Newark, — a  book  that 
visualizes  early  Newark  days  in  quite  the  same  way  that  the  Rev.  Dr. 
Leonard  Bacon's  "Historical  Discourses"  illustrates  the  early  New  Haven 
church  times. 

2  Deacon  Lawrence  Ward,  whose  eflFects  thus  came  into  Rector  Pierson's 
hands,  was  an  old  man  when  he  followed  the  elder  Pierson  from  Branford, 
where  he  had  been  an  oflScer  of  the  church.     His  name  appears  among  the 


Abraham  Pierson  211 

years  father  and  son  were  minister  and  teacher  of  the 
Newark  congregation,  at  an  annual  cost  to  the  town  of 
£120,  except  for  one  year,  when  hard  times  resulted  in  their 
accepting  twenty  pounds  less.  The  elder  Pierson,  as  part 
of  his  share  of  £80,  received  annually  one  pound  of  butter 
"for  every  milch  cow  in  the  town." 

In  1678,  ten  years  after  his  old  colleague,  Davenport, 
had  gone  to  Boston,  Abraham  Pierson,  Senior,  died  in 
Newark,  leaving  behind  him  a  pious  memory,  the  consider- 
able estate  for  the  times  of  £822,  that  included  a  large  col- 
lection of  books,  and  a  reputation  that  has  come  down  to  us 
of  one  of  the  sturdiest  and  strongest-minded  leaders  of  that 
first  independent  Puritan  pilgrimage  to  the  New  World. 
He  belonged  to  the  most  extreme  wing  of  the  English  reli- 
gious immigration;  his  career,  from  Lynn,  through  the 
Southampton  experiment,  to  Branford,  and  thence  to 
Newark  is  the  story  of  a  second  John  Davenport,  who  was 
unable  to  fit  himself  into  the  more  liberal  political  conditions 
that  were  growing  up  in  Massachusetts  and  the  Connecticut 
Colony.  He  was  a  learned  man,  though  he  -left  nothing 
beyond  his  Indian  Catechism  in  print.  His  library,  con- 
sisting of  four  hundred  and  forty  volumes,  largely  theologi- 
cal, was  one  of  the  most  extensive  in  the  colonies,  and  was 

original  settlers  of  the  New  Haven  Colony.  Among  the  possessions  of  Rector 
Pierson  at  his  death  in  1707  was  a  great  paneled  chair,  which  later  came 
into  the  University's  hands,  and  which  was  used  as  late  as  1870  as  "the 
President's  Chair"  at  Yale  Commencements.  It  is  now  in  the  President's 
office,  among  other  ancient  Yale  relics.  It  is  within  the  possibilities,  though 
nothing  certain  may  be  said  regarding  it,  that  this  old  Jacobite  chair  now 
owned  by  Yale  is  the  Deacon  Ward  "wainscot"  chair  that  Abraham  Pierson 
purchased  in  1672  in  Newark  and  later  took  to  Killingworth.  If  so,  this 
famous  chair  no  doubt  stood  in  Deacon  Ward's  first  New  Haven  house, 
which  faced  the  harbor  about  where  Olive  Street  meets  Water  Street  today, 
and  may  more  than  once  have  framed  the  slight  form  of  John  Davenport 
in  it. 


212 


The  Beginnings  of  Yale 


tS^^^!^ 


^m 


bequeathed  to  his  eldest  son,-^  except  for  one  or  two  English 
books  which  in  his  will  he  directed  his  widow  to  train  up 
his  younger  sons  in. 

Abraham  Pierson,  the  younger,  was  now  elected  minister 
of  the  Newark  church,  with  a  salary  of  £80,  his  annual 
supply  of  firewood  piled  in  his  kitchen  yard  by  town  decree, 
and  exemption  from  town  taxes,  or  rates,  granted  to  him. 
A  strapping  young  fellow,  with  a  great  aptitude  for  the 
pulpit,  where  he  probably  gave  extemporaneous  sermons  as 
was  the  custom  until  a  little  later  date,  and  endowed  with  a 
warm  heart  toward  the  needy  of  his  congregation,  the 
future  Rector  of  the  Collegiate  School  may  well  have 
thought  himself  settled  for  life  over  a  Puritan  church  to  his 

1  Abraham  Pierson  the  younger  brought  these  books  with  him  to  Killing- 
worth  in  1694.  As  he  was  one  of  the  founders  of  the  Collegiate  School  at 
the  Saybrook  meeting  in  1701,  and  there  doubtless  gave  books  to  the  new 
school,  there  is  some  possibility  that  his  gift  to  Yale  was  from  among  these 
ancient  theological  tomes.  Nineteen  of  these  volumes  were  presented  to 
the  College  Library  in  1707  by  Pierson's  sons. 


Abraham  Pierson  213 


liking.  That  he  was  popular  with  his  people  appears  from 
the  contemporaneous  statement  that  "great  harmony  and 
affection"  existed  between  him  and  them.  One  Obediah 
Bruen,  magistrate,  writing  to  his  children  at  the  elder  Pier- 
son's  death,  no  doubt  voiced  the  town's  views  when  he  said 
that  God  "hath  not  left  us  destitute  of  spiritual  enjoyments, 
but  hath  given  us  a  faithful  dispenser  of  the  Word  of  God — 
a  young  Timothy — a  man  after  God's  own  heart,  well 
rooted  and  grounded  in  the  faith,  one  with  whom  we  can 
comfortably  walk  in  the  doctrines  of  the  faith."  The 
Newark  period  in  Abraham  Pierson's  life  began  with  every 
indication  of  agreement  on  these  highly  important  matters 
of  the  faith  between  minister  and  congregation. 

Ill 

And  these  days  must  have  been  busy  ones  for  the  future 
Rector  Pierson,  marked  as  they  are  in  the  town  records  by 
the  usual  business  and  political  disturbances  of  the  times. 
It  is  a  transplanted  Connecticut  village,  walking  "in  the 
Congregational  way,"  that  we  now  see  Pierson  preaching 
to  in  English-governed  New  Jersey.  Indian  scares  are,  of 
course,  not  infrequent, — for  these  were  the  terrible  days  of 
King  Philip's  War,  and  Massachusetts  and  Connecticut 
were  in  a  state  of  terror.  Pierson's  people  protected  them- 
selves, as  many  other  villages  were  doing,  "Flankers"  or 
palisade  screens,  are  set  by  town  orders  at  two  corners 
of  the  Meeting-house,  behind  which  armed  sentries  watch 
for  Indian  movements  in  the  woods  while  the  minister 
preaches  within  the  square  cabin  of  a  church.  "It  is 
agreed,"  go  the  records,  "that  the  Drum  being  begun  to  be 
beaten  at  Joseph  Rigg's  Gate,  and  so  all  the  Way  up  the 
Street  as  far  as  Sam'l  Harrison's  Gate,  and  at  the  Ceasing 
of  the  beating  of  the  Drum  three  Guns  being  distinctly  fired 


214  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

off — it  shall  be  sufficient  Warning  for  all  as  are  in  the 
Military  List,  forthwith  to  meet  at  the  Meeting-House  in 
their  Arms."  The  woodland  about  the  village  clearing  is 
regularly  burned,  partly  for  safety  against  Indian  attack, 
no  doubt,  and  partly  for  pasturing.  Burning  these  woods  is 
a  serious  matter  to  the  village  safety,  also,  while  it  is  going 
on;  there  is  an  annual  committee  in  charge,  and  every  man 
over  sixteen  has  to  do  his  share,  both  to  burn  the  bushes  and 
to  keep  the  sparks  from  setting  the  thatch-roofed  houses 
afire.  No  doubt  this  annual  business  is  also  a  protection 
against  prowling  wild  animals,  as  during  Pierson's  early 
days  in  Newark  the  records  show  that  generous  bounties  are 
voted  for  the  heads  of  wolves  and  for  bear  pelts.  Against 
these  several  enemies,  "a  Watch"  is  ordered  to  be  "kept 
in  the  Town,  Three  in  a  Night,  at  some  House  appointed  by 
the  Sarjeants,"  who  are  to  call  the  Town  Drummer  from 
his  bed  as  need  arises. 

The  minister's  share  in  this  daily  round  is  very  likely 
limited  to  his  two  long  services  of  Sabbath  days,  his  weekly 
"lectures,"  and  his  attendance  upon  the  sick  and  dying, 
wherein  he  is  assisted  by  the  elder  of  the  church,  and,  we 
may  believe,  by  his  helpful  wife.  Two  settlers  of  each  of 
the  town-quarters  are  appointed  "to  look  after  the  carrying 
in  Mr.  Pierson's  Wood  for  the  year."  This  becoming 
difficult  to  manage,  a  certain  day  is  set  upon  which  the  min- 
ister's wood  supply  is  to  be  cut  and  dragged  in  by  ox-teams, 
and  the  business  of  seeing  that  this  is  done  is  divided  among 
the  quarters  of  the  settlement  in  annual  rotation.  The 
Meeting-house  needs  repairs  "to  keep  out  the  Wett  and 
Cold  for  the  present,"  the  seats  are  rebuilt,  and  a  new 
shingle  roof  put  on.  The  youth  of  the  village, — and  I  take 
it  that  the  Puritan  youngsters  were  no  different  in  natural 
spirits  from  their  descendants, — call  forth  numerous  rulings 
of  the  nonplussed  town  meetings.    The  boys  are  misbehaving 


Abraham  Pierson  215 

"both  in  the  Meeting  House  and  without  by  the  House 
Sides"  on  Sabbath  days,  and  Mr.  Pierson's  younger  brother 
or  nephew,  Thomas,  is  ordered  to  look  after  them.  He  has 
not  succeeded  in  doing  this,  come  a  few  years,  and  the  town 
meeting  names  another  man, — in  fact,  a  long  succession  of 
citizens  is  called  upon  to  keep  an  eye  on  the  disorderly 
youth  and  snap  their  ears  with  the  pole  kept  for  the  purpose 
in  the  Meeting-house.  Nor  do  the  youths  of  the  village 
limit  their  pranks  to  the  long,  dull  Sabbaths.  Safety  valves 
seem  to  burst  out  of  their  restricted  lives  in  various  direc- 
tions. It  has  to  be  voted  by  town  meeting  assembled  that 
all  entertainments  in  the  village  houses  shall  end  at  nine 
o'clock  of  the  evening, — "to  prevent  disorderly  Meeting  of 
Young  People  at  unseasonable  Times,"  indignantly  scratches 
the  dignified  town  clerk  on  the  record  book. 

But  the  town  life  of  the  little  Puritan  settlement  goes  on, 
quietly,  throughout  all  of  these  difficulties  with  human 
nature.  The  town  gravedigger  is  voted  "3s.  for  a  Man's 
Grave,  2s.  for  a  Middle  Person,  and  is.  6d.  for  a  Child." 
The  seating  order  in  the  Meeting-house  is  not  satisfactory, 
"and  it  is  agreed  that  Persons  should  be  placed  according  to 
Office,  Age,  Estate,  Infirmity  and  Desent  or  Parentage" 
(so  oligarchical  has  the  second  Davenport  theocratic  de- 
mocracy become  in  its  transplanting) .  A  shoemaker, — one 
Whitehead, — is  invited  to  settle  by  a  special  town  vote, 
"provided  he  will  supply  the  Town  with  Shoes."  An  ex- 
perienced boatman  is  likewise  honored,  on  the  understand- 
ing that  he  will  ferry  citizens  back  and  forth  across  the 
narrow  river  from  Boatman's  Neck.  The  fences  about  the 
private  house-lots  make  continual  trouble,  and  many  town 
votes  are  recorded  about  them.  The  matter  is  decided  by 
ordering  each  householder  to  set  up  stakes,  inscribed  with 
his  initials,  at  either  end  of  his  fence  and  to  make  that  fence 
four  feet  four  inches  high, — very  like  the  palisades  that 


2i6  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

shut  out  the  New  Haven  settlers  from  the  roadway  before 
their  home-lots. 

Throughout  this  quarter  of  a  century,  Abraham  Pierson 
was  no  doubt  contented  with  his  lot.  But,  by  1692,  a  change 
came.  Some  misunderstanding  or  other  arose, — what  we 
do  not  know.  But  it  is  reflected  in  his  church  relations.  In 
1687  an  original  levy  on  the  rate-payers  for  the  minister's 
salary  had  been  changed  by  town  vote  "to  pay  the  Minister 
by  Contributions."  There  being  some  difliculty  even  about 
this,  it  had  been  decided  to  have  fifty  of  the  villagers  guaran- 
tee the  original  £80  by  voluntary  taxation,  with  firewood 
extra.  But  this  plan  lapsed,  and  the  result  was  that  Pierson 
went  without  salary  for  two  years. 

The  long-continued  harmony  between  Pierson  and  his 
Newark  church  was  now  breaking  up.  Several  things  had 
their  part  in  this  change  of  relations.  The  money  trouble 
seems  not  to  have  been  a  chief  cause  (Pierson's  old  college 
chum,  John  Prudden,  who  succeeded  him  in  the  Newark 
church,  had  the  same  trouble  over  collecting  his  salary), 
but  rather  a  symptom  of  a  more  fundamental  difl'iculty.  The 
whole  period  of  Pierson's  last  ten  years  in  Newark,  we  may 
recall,  was  one  of  wide  political  and  financial  disturbance 
throughout  the  province.  The  Dutch  had  been  driven  from 
New  Amsterdam  and  Sir  Edmund  Andros  had  become 
Governor  of  New  Jersey,  New  York,  and  New  England. 
A  new  King  had  come  to  England  and  Andros  had  been 
seized  and  removed  from  office  at  Boston.  As  a  result,  all 
public  and  private  affairs  were  in  a  serious  state.  In  Newark 
the  town  meeting  had  to  take  steps  to  protect  its  citizens' 
property  rights.  So  the  Newark  financial  support  to  the 
church  languished.  Yet  the  trouble  between  Pierson  and 
his  congregation  lay  elsewhere, — in  a  gradually  widening 
difference  of  opinion  between  them  over  matters  concerning 
the  church  itself.     Jonathan  Dickinson,  later  president  of 


Abraham  Pierson  217 

Princeton  College,  was  to  be  one  of  Plerson's  scholars  at 
the  Killingworth  School  and  must  have  known  what  there 
was  to  know  about  this  difficulty.  Writing  about  it  many 
years  later,  he  criticises  the  Newark  people  as  being  "cul- 
pable for  managing  a  controversy  with  their  worthy  minister 
upon  these  points"  (Presbyterianism  and  Congregational- 
ism). Pierson,  says  Dickinson,  "removed  from  their  abuses 
to  New  England,  where  he  was  received  with  great  kindness, 
and  died  in  the  highest  honor  and  esteem  among  them,  not- 
withstanding his  Presbyterian  principles."  The  affair  is 
quite  unimportant  except  as  It  throws  light  on  the  little- 
known  character  of  Abraham  Pierson,  and  on  his  theological 
views.  A  long-current  Interpretation  of  it,  out  of  which 
Pierson  comes  in  rather  sad  disrepute,  has  been  to  the  effect 
that  he  "had  imbibed  moderate  Presbyterianism  from  his 
father,  and  when  at  Cambridge  College,  he  had  received 
strong  prejudices  against  Plymouthean  Independency;  and 
after  his  father's  death  he  was  for  introducing  more  rigid 
Presbyterianism  into  Newark,"  His  church  matters  had 
been  peaceable  during  his  father's  time,  goes  this  legend, 
but  the  congregation  did  not  take  kindly  to  his  "pride  of 
directing  .  .  .  far  beyond  anything  that  the  congregation 
had  been  accustomed  to  witness."  He  had  "distinguished 
talents  and  accomplishments,  but  had  neither  the  meekness, 
patience,  nor  prudence  of  his  father."  As  this  tradition 
started  a  century  after  the  episode  Itself,  I  Imagine  that  we 
may  rely  more  precisely  upon  the  contemporaneous  Dickin- 
son story  of  It.  This  puts  Pierson  In  rather  a  more  favor- 
able light,  to  be  sure,  but  which  would  seem  to  be  more  likely 
than  the  later  and  doubtless  warped  story. 

The  question  of  Presbyterianism,  however,  was  shortly 
to  become  a  large  matter  in  Newark,  as  throughout  New 
Jersey,  and  In  fact  New  England.  Originally  founded  as  a 
New  Haven  Congregational  church,  the  Newark  settlement 


21 8  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

had  come  into  touch  with  the  Scotch  Presbyterians  who  had 
begun,  by  1682,  to  settle  throughout  the  province.  Pierson 
could  hardly  have  remained  unacquainted  with  the  more 
aggressive  leaders  among  these  newcomers, — neighbors  as 
they  became, — and  from  their  arrival  no  doubt  found  him- 
self more  and  more  inclined  toward  his  early  leanings  to 
their  form  of  church  organization.  He  was  a  "Scotch 
Presbyterian,"  his  grandson  many  years  later  told  President 
Stiles.  There  was,  of  course,  practically  no  difference  be- 
tween the  theology  of  the  New  England  Puritan-Congre- 
gationalists,  and  the  various  Presbyterian  elements  that 
from  the  earliest  days  came  into  New  England  church  life, 
and  which  now,  in  some  numbers,  had  come  directly  from 
Scotland  into  New  Jersey.  Many  of  the  foremost  Massa- 
chusetts Congregational  church  founders  were  "Presby- 
terians." The  only  serious  difference  between  the  two 
groups  had  to  do  with  matters  of  church  organization,  with 
the  duties  and  powers  given  the  elders  and  the  synods, — 
that  "consociational  government"  which  the  historian  Trum- 
bull speaks  of. 

Abraham  Pierson's  Newark  people,  by  1 690-1 692,  were 
not  as  ready  as  was  Pierson  himself  to  join  this  new  move- 
ment, and  his  dismissal  resulted. 

It  is  curious  to  see  how  matters  turned  out  as  the  years 
came  around,  both  for  the  Presbyterian  Pierson  and  for  the 
Congregational  Newark  church  that  dismissed  him.  The 
next  three  ministers  of  that  church  were  undoubtedly  Con- 
gregationalists  of  the  New  England  order:  Pierson's  col- 
lege chum,  John  Prudden;  Jabez  Wakeman,  Harvard  1697; 
and  Samuel  Whittlesey,  who  later  studied  with  Pierson 
at  Killingworth  and  who  was  graduated  from  the  Collegiate 
School  in  1705.  Then  the  Scotch  Presbyterian  movement 
seems  to  have  gained  headway.  Joseph  Webb,  a  Yale 
graduate  of  17 15,  the  son  of  the  Rev.  Joseph  Webb  of 


Abraham  Pierson 


219 


Fairfield  who  had  been  one  of  the  Collegiate  School  founders 
with  Pierson,  was  introduced  to  the  Newark  people  by 
Rector  Samuel  Andrew  of  Yale  College  as  their  pastor. 
Presbyterianism  had  now  absorbed  Congregationalism  gen- 
erally throughout  New  Jersey,  and  Joseph  Webb  easily 
carried  his  Newark  people  into  that  church  organization 
with  him.  Abraham  Pierson's  son,  John,  a  Collegiate 
School  graduate  of  171 1,  became  the  minister  of  a 
neighboring  town  and  associated  himself  with  this  move- 
ment over  his  long  career  of  fifty-three  years.  Pierson, 
however,  returning  to  Congregational  Connecticut  as  a 
moderate  Scotch  Presbyterian,  passed  the  remainder  of  his 
life  in  the  older  church, — the  dominant  independent-church 
sentiment  of  Connecticut  having  absorbed  the  Presbyterian 
movement,  compromising  with  it  only  halfway  in  the  famous 
Saybrook  Platform  of  1708. 

Abraham  Pierson  left  Newark  in  1692,  made  a  brief  stay 
in  Greenwich,  Connecticut,  and  in  1694  was  called  to  Kill- 
ingworth,  where  he  took  the  long-vacant  pulpit  of  John 
Woodbridge.  Welcoming  him  to  the  Colony,  the  General 
Assembly  in  1695  grant  him  '*two  hundred  acres  of  land 
for  a  farme,"  and  exempt  him  from  "paiment  of  rates  for 
his  stock  and  land."  Six  years  later  he  becomes  the  first 
Rector  of  the  Collegiate  School. 


Jibraham 

juiersons 

Sfa. 


m  the 
Coffege 

Gampus 


Signatures  of  the  Original  Trustees  of  the  Collegiate  School 


PART  III 

THE  COLLEGIATE  SCHOOL  AND  YALE 
COLLEGE 


The  Yale  Arms 

ana  Cresi  |^ 


CHAPTER  I 


THE  KILLINGWORTH  BEGINNINGS 


I 

OUR  modern  traveler,  gliding  on  his 
comfortable  way  along  the  Connecti- 
cut shore  of  Long  Island  Sound,  finds 
himself  in  a  pleasant  land,  the  open 
country  and  thriving  towns  of  which 
reveal  to  him,  with  each  passing  mile, 
a  smiling  corner  of  a  prosperous 
modern  New  England. 
Yet  such  a  traveler,  in  his  fleeting  glimpses  of  ancient 
white  churches  and  weather-beaten  houses,  prim  old-fash- 
ioned gardens  and  broad  New  England  village  streets 
under  their  elms,  might  well  fancy  himself,  here  and  there, 
two  centuries  back  of  his  own  generation,  and  journeying 
in  Colonial  times.  For  he  is  on  historic  ground.  From 
Stamford  on  the  west,  through  Milford  and  New  Haven 


224  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

and  Branford,  to  New  London  on  the  east,  this  was  the 
ancient  highway  that  bound  together  the  first  Puritan  settle- 
ments of  the  Connecticut  coast.  Over  it,  when  it  was  no 
more  than  the  Pequot  Trail,  had  passed  the  Puritan  soldiers 
in  the  Pequot  wars ;  over  it,  when  it  had  become  the  King's 
Highway,  had  gone  the  good  folk  of  the  old  New  Haven 
Jurisdiction, — steeple-hatted  ministers  in  their  cloaks  and 
black  doublets,  scarlet-coated  emissaries  of  the  English 
Kings,  country  folk  and  the  great  men  of  the  four  colonies. 
Within  sight  of  it  Theophllus  Eaton  had  sailed  to  Quinnip- 
iac.  Upon  it  the  gracious  Lady  Fenwick  and  her  lord  had 
journeyed  from  New  Haven  to  Saybrook  Fort.  A  rough 
bridle-path  by  1650,  it  had  seen  the  New  Haven  Colony 
ministers  travel  to  Boston  for  the  Bay  synods  of  their  times, 
and,  a  few  years  later,  John  Davenport  ride  over  it  in  his 
exile  to  Boston  from  his  foundered  New  Haven  ship  of 
state.  The  Boston  Post-road  by  1673,  mail  carriers  had 
then  begun  those  irregular  monthly  journeys  on  horseback 
over  it  that  had  first  brought  provincial  Connecticut  into 
touch  with  cosmopolitan  Boston.  As  such,  the  young  Har- 
vard graduate,  James  Pierpont,  had  ridden  over  it  on  his 
entrance  upon  that  New  Haven  career  one  result  of  which 
had  been  the  Collegiate  School.  This  ancient  path,  a  beaten 
if  rough  roadway  by  1700,  had  given  Madam  Knight,  the 
sprightly  Boston  school-ma'am,  plenty  of  peril  and  amuse- 
ment on  that  famous  horseback  ride  of  hers  from  Boston  to 
New  York,  all  of  which  she  has  set  down  in  her  diary. 
Ebenezer  Hurd,  most  renowned  of  the  postboys  who  gal- 
loped on  the  public's  business  over  this  ancient  highway  in 
still  later  Colonial  times,  was  to  journey  upon  it  for  forty- 
eight  years  until  1775,  when  he  was  to  make  his  last  and 
most  famous  ride,  bringing  the  news  of  the  Battle  of 
Lexington  to  Connecticut  colonists  already  prepared  for 
independence   by  the   sturdy   Puritanism   of  those  pioneer 


The  Killingworth  Beginnings  225 

days.  And  Benjamin  Franklin,  Postmaster  General,  was 
to  drive  over  this  highway  in  more  settled  times,  in  his 
cushioned  chaise,  with  gangs  of  men  behind  him  in  carts 
filled  with  stones,  which  they  dropped  as  each  mile  was 
registered  on  the  quaint  cyclometer  that  their  inventive  chief 
had  attached  to  his  chaise  wheels. 

One  of  these  stones,  marked  "25  N.  H.,"  may  still  be 
seen  on  the  south  side  of  the  Clinton  main  street,  just  east 
of  the  village  Green. 

II 

It  is  directly  across  the  main  street  in  Clinton  from 
Benjamin  Franklin's  ancient  marker  that  one  may  step  out 
of  the  bustle  of  the  modern  highway  onto  ground  historic  in 
Yale  annals.  For  it  was  here  that  Yale  began  its  existence. 
A  monument,  properly  inscribed  in  Latin  and  English  and 
surmounted  by  sculptured  books,  stands  on  the  old  Meeting- 
house Hill,  and  informs  the  wayfarer  that  a  few  rods  east 
is  the  site  of  Rector  Abraham  Pierson's  Killingworth  par- 
sonage, in  which  the  Collegiate  School  of  Connecticut  was 
first  kept.-^  Traces  of  the  Killingworth  of  those  early  days 
are  not  hard  to  find,  and  a  drowsy  summer  afternoon's 
search  for  them  will  be  found  worth  making. 

1  The  Stanton  House,  built  in  1789,  when  Rector  Pierson's  house  was 
torn  down,  stands  at  the  street  end  of  the  lot  on  which  the  Collegiate  School 
stood.  Parts  of  the  old  Pierson  homestead  were  built  into  this  successor 
to  it.  The  sills  of  Yale's  first  home,  for  instance,  may  now  be  seen  in 
the  Stanton  House  cellar,  laid  across  great  stone  piers  and  thus  supporting 
the  two  immense  stone  chimneys.  There  is  good  reason  to  think  that  some 
of  the  odd-shaped  attic  windows  of  the  Stanton  House  may  have  been 
in  Rector  Pierson's.  In  the  Stanton  garden  the  old  Pierson  well  was 
recently  uncovered  and  marked, — the  well  at  which  the  first  Yale  students 
drew  their  water  supply.  An  ancient  iron  key  was  dug  up  when  this 
well  was  found  in  1913;  from  its  location  it  undoubtedly  was  a  door  key 
to  the  Pierson  parsonage,  though  whether  it  dates  back  to  1701  may  not 
be  determinable. 


The  Killingworth  Beginnings  227 

All  of  this  section  of  the  Sound  coast  was  bought  in  1641 
from  Uncas,  the  Mohegan  sachem,  by  George  Fenwick  of 
Saybrook.  Killingworth  village  was  settled  in  1663  by  a 
few  families  from  East  Guilford, — now  Madison, — who 
gave  it  their  old  Warwickshire  town  name  of  Kenilworth, — 
a  name  that  by  later  usage  of  careless  town  clerks  became 
Killingworth,  and  later  still  was  changed  to  the  present 
CHnton  by  the  legislature.  When  Abraham  Pierson  settled 
here  in  1694,  the  village  was  a  straggling  double  row  of 
unpainted,  roomy  farmhouses  that  stood  at  irregular  inter- 
vals facing  the  Boston  Post-road  from  their  roughly-cleared 
and  cultivated  farm  plots.  Indian  River  crossed  this  high- 
way, as  now,  a  little  east  of  the  village  center,  and  travelers 
had  to  go  north  when  they  came  to  it,  to  a  ford  above  the 
present  burying  ground,  where  there  was  easy  passage  to  the 
opposite  shore.  Overlooking  the  river  stood  the  Meeting- 
house, on  its  small  rise  of  ground,  with  its  cemetery  behind 
it.  A  map,  reconstructed  from  the  list  of  original  land 
allotments  of  1665,  was  recently  made  by  the  Killingworth 
town  clerk,  and  has  been  redrawn,  with  notes  added  of  the 
town  as  it  was  in  1701,  to  accompany  this  chapter.  There 
were  then  no  houses  on  the  now  settled  south  side  of  the 
main  street  west  of  Indian  River,  and  there  was  a  broad 
Common  at  the  east  end  of  the  village,  where  the  Train- 
band perhaps  had  its  maneuvers.  Traveling  at  this  early 
time  was  difficult.  The  Boston  Post-road  entered  Killing- 
worth  from  Guilford  from  the  north,  where  the  "Farm 
Bridge"  crossed  the  Hammonasset  River  at  an  old  fording 
place,  the  present  main  highway  through  the  village  to  the 
west  being  a  later  addition.  Until  just  before  1700,  when 
a  rough  wooden  bridge  was  built,  the  only  way  to  cross  the 
Menunketesuc  River,  east  of  Clinton,  was  over  a  "riding- 
way"  at  low  tide  near  the  mouth  of  that  river.  The  common 
route  for  pedestrians  between  Saybrook  and  Guilford, — so 


228  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

impassable  were  the  woods  and  so  numerous  and  unford- 
able  the  rivers, — was  by  the  beach.  North  of  the  Killing- 
worth  home-lots,  during  Abraham  Pierson's  period,  were 
thick  virgin  woods,  stretching  unbroken, — except  by  Indian 
trails  which  had  by  then  become  bridle-paths, — from 
Middletown  to  Wallingford.  These  woods  came  down  to 
the  village,  close  to  the  burying  ground.^ 

Rector  Pierson,  surrounded  by  his  family  (his  own  tomb- 
stone overshadowed  by  a  more  pretentious  memorial  to  his 
less  famous  son) ,  lies  on  the  northwest  slope  of  this  burying 
ground,  a  few  rods  away  from  the  New  Haven  railroad, 
over  which  the  iron  successors  of  Ebenezer  Hurd  now  roar 
through  the  old  Pierson  farm  a  score  of  times  a  day. 

Ill 

When  the  first  scholars  rode  over  the  old  Boston  Post- 
road  to  the  opening  of  Abraham  Pierson's  primitive 
Collegiate  School,  the  center  of  the  Killingworth  town  life 
was  about  the  old  Meeting-house  Green.  Here,  when  Pier- 
son arrived  to  be  the  minister,  had  stood  one  of  the  typical 
New  England  meeting-houses  of  the  day, — the  usual  square, 
rough-clapboarded,  turreted  building  that  was  the  practi- 
cally invariable  style  of  the  first  period  of  New  England 
Congregational-church  building.  No  representation  exists 
of  this  ancient  Killingworth  church,  fort  alike  against 
prowling  Indians  and  an  ever-watchful  Satan,  but  it  was 
doubtless  like  the  first  New  Haven  Meeting-house,  and 
others  of  that  early  day,  a  very  good  picture  of  which  one 
may  see  on  an  early  map  of  Newark,  where  Pierson 
preached  for  years.  But  one  of  the  first  results  of  Abraham 
Pierson's   coming  to   Killingworth   was   the   erection   of   a 

1 1  am  indebted  to  Mr.  John  A.  Hull,  of  Clinton,  for  a  number  of  these 
facts  regarding  ancient  Killingworth. 


The  Killingworth  Beginnings 


229 


jlieefina-  house 
in  1701 


second  Meeting-house  on  the  hill,  and  a  picture  of  this  has 
come  down  to  us  on  an  ancient  panel  owned  in  the  village.^ 
It  must  have  been  a  hopelessly  inartistic  edifice,  If  this  old 
panel  painting  tells  a  true  story,  as  no  doubt  it  does.  It  was 
square,  as  had  been  its  predecessor, — thirty-five  feet  each 
way, — clapboarded,  with  a  central  door  between  rough 
windows  on  the  east  and  west  sides,  a  small  window  high  in 
the  south  end,  three  windows  on  the  second  story  on  either 
side,  and  a  small  square  turret,  surmounted  by  a  miniature 
spire,  on  the  south.  What  its  interior  was,  when  Abraham 
Pierson  preached  there,  we  now  have  no  means  of  knowing. 
It  had  an  advantage  over  its  predecessor,  however,  in  that 
a  bell  instead  of  a  drum  called  the   Killingworth  church 


1  This  panel  belongs  to  the  descendants  of  the  Rev.  Jared  Eliot  in 
Clinton.  It  was  painted  in  1710  by  an  itinerant  "Boston  artist."  This 
second  Killingworth  Meeting-house  was  built  in  1700. 


230  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

people  to  the  Sabbath-day  meetings.^  No  doubt  there  was 
the  usual  high  wooden  pulpit  within,  with  the  great  sound- 
ing-board above  it,  and  no  doubt  it  was  furnished  with  the 
usual  heavy  oak-slab  seats  of  that  early  day  (this  was  before 
the  later  era  of  family  pews  came  in) .  As  in  all  other  New 
England  colonial  churches,  there  was  no  stove, — a  habit 
which  the  New  England  Puritans  brought  over  with  them 
from  England,  and  which  many  English  country  churches 
carried  on  for  generations  after.  A  well-sweep  appears  in 
the  panel  of  this  ecclesiastical  stronghold,  and  a  small  build- 
ing just  east  of  the  church,  which  may  be  taken  to  be  either 
the  end  of  the  parsonage  beyond,  or  the  village  schoolhouse 
that  Mr.  Pierson  managed  to  get  his  congregation  to  build 
in  1703.^ 

It  was  ten  rods  east  of  this  spot  (so  President  Stiles  has  it 
in  his  "Literary  Diary,"  and  modern  investigation  proves 
it  to  be  correct)  that  Rector  Pierson  lived  in  his  parsonage, 
facing  the  village  Green.^ 

President  Stiles  describes  this  building  as  a  large,  two- 
story  house,  likely  enough  similar  in  appearance  to  the  usual 
great-roofed,  two-story   (or  "double")   homesteads  of  the 

lA  new  drum  was  bought  in  1698.  In  1703  the  Town  accepted  the  gift 
of  a  bell  from  some  of  the  church  people. 

2  This  schoolhouse  was  barn-like,  with  a  stone  chimney  at  one  end, 
and  stood  between  Mr.  Pierson's  parsonage  and  the  new  Meeting-house. 
Parts  of  the  framework  of  the  original  Meeting-house  were  used  in  this 
building.  The  first  schoolmaster  had  been  an  old  parishioner  of  Mr.  Pierson, 
an  uneducated  countryman  named  Brown,  who,  at  Mr.  Pierson's  suggestion 
to  the  town,  had  been  hired  "to  keep  skoul  for  one  quarter  of  a  year,  and  for 
his  pains"  to  have  £9.  When  this  new  schoolhouse  was  built,  seven  years 
later,  Captain  "Henery"  Crane  of  the  "Train-band"  was  "voated"  the 
position. 

3  Rev.  W.  E.  Brooks,  in  his  historical  address  at  the  bicentennial  of  the 
Clinton  Congregational  Church  in  1867,  said:  "The  College  building  was 
established  here  in  what  was  then  Killingworth,  near  the  edge  of  the  Green, 
and  a  little  south  and  east  from  the  barn  which  stands  on  the  Stanton  place." 


The  Killingworth  Beginnings  231 

day,  of  which  several  survivors  have  come  down  to  us.  It 
faced  west,  looking  up  a  slight  rise  under  the  trees,  past  the 
newly  erected  schoolhouse,  to  the  Meeting-house.  On  its 
east  side  was  the  usual  kitchen  ell  and  its  recently-unearthed 
garden  well  under  some  apple  trees.  .  We  may  properly 
imagine  the  Pierson  lot  as  narrow  on  the  south,  or  modern 
Clinton  main  street  end,  and  running  deep  to  the  north  along 
the  village  Green  to  the  church-society  farm  of  some  ten 
acres  (now  the  newer  and  eastern  part  of  the  present 
Clinton  cemetery) .  Where  the  Stanton  house  now  stands 
on  the  main  street  were  Mr.  Pierson's  garden  and  perhaps 
small  tobacco  field. 

Pierson's  parsonage  had  been  the  "town  house,"  and  in 
1675  had  been  fortified  against  the  Indians.  It  was  pre- 
sented to  Pierson  in  1695,  shortly  after  he  had  settled  with 
his  large  family  in  it.  In  the  Killingworth  town  records  is 
this  reference  to  the  gift:  "The  town  being  met  together  to 
consider  of  something  to  be  done  for  the  encouragement  of 
Mr.  Abraham  Pierson.  .  Do  give  the  said  Mr.  Pierson  the 
Town  House  and  Orchard  .  .  upon  condition  that  the  said 
Mr.  Pierson  shall  plant  an  orchard  of  an  hundred  apple 
trees  upon  the  parsonage  land,  where  the  town  shall  judge 
most  convenient,  and  the  said  trees  to  manure  and  secure." 
There  comes  out,  now  and  then  (as  in  this  instance)  in  our 
acquaintance  with  the  good  Rector  Pierson,  a  very  delightful 
practicality  of  mind  in  the  midst  of  his  more  idealistic  labors. 
And  we  may  smile  a  bit,  too,  in  observing  the  way  in  which 
his  suggestion  of  financial  discouragement  was  met  by  an 
equally  canny  congregation;  for  he  was  to  grow  the  apples 
for  his  own  cider,  and  thus  relieve  the  congregation  of  a 
responsibility  for  the  parson's  table  that  was  undertaken  by 
most  of  the  colonial  villages  of  that  date.  There  must  have 
been  a  thriving  apple  orchard  on  the  Pierson  farm  when 
his  first   scholars   arrived   in    1702.     He   possessed  cider 


232  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

barrels,  so  the  inventory  of  his  estate  shows,  and  kept  them 
in  his  cellar.  And  from  that  same  official  document  we  learn 
that  he  cultivated  his  own  tobacco  on  the  parsonage  land. 
Like  the  Rev.  James  Pierpont  over  in  New  Haven,  Rector 
Pierson  enjoyed  his  hearth-fire  pipe,  and,  when  visitors 
came,  got  out  his  "canes"  of  home-grown  tobacco,  his  tongs 
and  tobacco  box  and  cider  mugs  for  an  evening's  sociability. 

IV 

Four  months  after  the  organization  at  Saybrook,  Rector 
Pierson  took  in  his  first  scholar,  the  nineteen-year-old  Jacob 
Heminway  of  East  Haven,  whose  pastor,  James  Pierpont, 
likely  enough,  advised  the  step. 

This  was  in  March,  1702.  There  were  no  other  boys 
who  were  ready  to  come,  and  so,  from  then  around  to  Sep- 
tember of  the  Collegiate  School's  first  year,  this  youth  (as 
he  afterward,  when  an  old  man,  stated  to  President  Stiles) 
"solus  was  all  the  College  the  first  half-year."  Rector 
Pierson  carried  on  this  young  man's  extensive  classical  study 
and  no  doubt  instructed  him  in  divinity.  The  young  Hemin- 
way finally  prepared  for  the  pulpit.  Mr.  Pierson  rode  over 
to  Saybrook  on  September  16,  1702,  and  there,  in  Rev. 
Thomas  Buckingham's  house  on  the  Saybrook  village  Green, 
held  the  first  Commencement  in  Yale  history. 

The  Trustees  had,  as  we  have  seen,  explicitly  ordered  that 
there  be  no  public  show  at  these  annual  graduation  cere- 
monies, so  the  affair  was  quiet  and,  very  likely,  attended 
only  by  the  Trustees,  and  with  as  little  ceremony  as  possible. 
The  Buckinghams,  so  tradition  has  it,  prepared  a  great 
dinner  for  this  occasion.  The  Trustees  and  scholars  and 
young  ministers  who  were  there  for  their  M.A.  degrees, 
sat  down  to  a  table  laden  with  oysters  and  other  shellfish, 
venison,    succotash,    and  boiled   Indian   pudding.     At   this 


The  Killingworth  Beginnings  233 

meeting  the  Trustees  voted  to  allow  "the  Gentlemen  of  our 
Government,"  other  ministers,  "Benefactors  to  the  School" 
and  "all  other  persons  of  Liberal  Education,"  in  addition  to 
the  male  parents  and  guardians  of  the  scholars,  to  become 
"auditors"  at  later  Commencements. 

Five  young  men, — two  of  them  Congregational  min- 
isters of  the  Colony  and  one  a  preacher, — were  given  their 
second  degrees  of  Master  of  Arts  at  this  first  Saybrook 
Commencement,  all  of  them  obviously  introduced  by  the 
Trustees  or  friends  of  the  new  School,  so  that  it  might  give 
a  good  account  of  itself  to  the  Connecticut  people  at  its 
beginnings.  Rev.  Stephen  Buckingham,  son  of  the  Saybrook 
Trustee,  and  at  this  time  minister  at  the  small  settlement  of 
Norwalk,  was  the  best  known  of  these  young  candidates. 
He  was  later  to  become  a  Trustee,  himself.  The  four  others 
were  Rev.  Samuel  Treat,  eight  years  out  of  Harvard  and 
now  minister  at  the  little  hamlet  of  Preston  on  the  Thames 
River,  near  the  home  of  old  James  Noyes  at  Stonington, 
by  whom  he  was  doubtless  sent  over;  Joseph  Coit,  the 
preacher  at  Plainfield,  where  lived  the  Collegiate  School's 
first  patron.  Major  James  Fitch;  Joseph  Moss,  who  had 
been  for  three  years  the  Rector  of  the  Hopkins  Grammar 
School  in  New  Haven,  and  thus  close  to  James  Pierpont, 
and  who  was  later  on  to  help  teach  the  scholars;  and 
Nathaniel  Chauncy,  who  had  been  privately  educated  in 
the  family  of  his  uncle,  the  Rev.  Israel  Chauncy  of  Strat- 
ford, one  of  the  Trustees,  in  return  for  the  life-use  of  the 
young  man's  father's  library.^ 

1  The  Chauncey  family  tradition  has  it  that  Nathaniel  Chauncy  joined 
Jacob  Heminway  at  Pierson's  house  for  a  short  time  before  Commencement 
as  a  candidate  for  a  B.A.,  but  that,  when  the  Trustees  examined  him  at 
Saybrook,  they  found  him  so  far  advanced  that  they  gave  him  his  M.A. 
instead.  This  may  well  have  been,  and  it  would  not  necessarily  conflict  with 
Heminway's  statement  that  he  was  the  only  scholar,  or,  as  he  states  it, 
the  whole  college,  for  the  first  half-year. 


234  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

Immediately  after  this  first  quiet  Commencement  three 
boys  arrived  at  Rector  Pierson's  parsonage.  Young  John 
Hart,  of  whom  we  shall  hear  more  directly,  rode  down 
from  Cambridge,  where  he  had  just  finished  his  Sophomore 
year  at  Harvard.  He  was  the  son  of  the  Farmington  train- 
band captain  and  former  Speaker  of  the  Connecticut  Lower 
House,  and  was  evidently  recalled  from  Harvard  by  his 
father  to  encourage  the  Connecticut  experiment,  if  not  for 
other  reasons.  Samuel  Russel  of  Branford  and  Samuel 
Andrew  of  Milford  sent  two  more  youths,  the  former  his 
son  John,  and  the  latter  one  Phineas  Fiske  (the  son  of  the 
Milford  town  doctor),  who  was  to  become  a  tower  of 
strength  to  the  School  before  many  years  had  passed. 

With  these  four  boys,  and  Heminway,  Rector  Pierson 
seems  to  have  started  in  in  earnest  at  his  rather  large 
undertaking  for  a  busy  village  minister,  and  the  wheels  of 
Yale's  educational  history  may  be  said  to  have  begun  for- 
mally to  revolve.  During  the  next  two  years  more  scholars 
arrived  from  time  to  time,  until,  by  the  middle  of  the  third 
year,  there  were  probably  some  fifteen  to  twenty  youths 
studying  at  the  Killingworth  minister's  house.  A  half-dozen 
of  these  boys  were  sons  or  near  relatives  of  the  Trustees  or 
of  influential  friends  of  the  School,  or  were  influenced  by 
them  to  come  to  it.  The  two  Hartford  Trustees,  Samuel 
Mather  and  Timothy  Woodbridge,  sent  their  sons,  as  did 
Nathaniel  Lynde  of  Saybrook,  whose  interest  in  the  School 
was  well  known.  Samuel  Russel  of  Branford  sent  his 
nephew.  James  Pierpont  sent  over  one  other  New  Haven 
boy  besides  Heminway.  Thomas  Buckingham  had  his  hand 
in  introducing  two  Saybrook  youths,  one  of  them  Samuel 
Whittlesey,  who  was  later  to  be  the  Hopkins  Grammar 
School  Rector.  Crotchety  old  Gershom  Bulkeley  of  Weth- 
ersfield,  now  that  the  illegal  founding  had  been  so  rashly  ac- 
complished, fearsomely  let  three  of  his  neighbors'  sons  run 


The  Killingworth  Beginnings  235 

the  risk  of  English  parliamentary  disapproval  by  going 
down  through  the  wilderness  to  Killingworth.  Abraham 
Pierson  -himself  brought  in  two  boys  from  the  neighboring 
town  of  Guilford, — Samuel  Cooke  and  Jared  Eliot,  both  to 
become  in  later  life  Trustees  of  the  School,  and  the  latter 
one  of  the  most  learned  men  of  his  day.  And  Rev.  Gurdon 
Saltonstall  sent  one  youth  from  his  New  London  congrega- 
tion. The  great  expectations,  however,  of  numerous 
scholars  coming  to  the  Collegiate  School  from  towns  east 
of  the  Connecticut  border  did  not  materialize.  One  came, 
indeed,  in  these  first  years  from  as  far  away  as  Marthas 
Vineyard,  and  two  from  Northampton — the  latter  being 
relations  of  the  learned  Nathaniel  Chauncy  and  parish- 
ioners of  old  Rev.  Solomon  Stoddard,  whose  friendly  rela- 
tions with  the  Mathers  and  Samuel  Sewall  doubtless  led  him 
to  interest  himself  to  this  extent  in  the  orthodox  experiment 
at  Killingworth.  But  the  outsiders  were  few.  The  Colony 
at  large  had  not  as  yet  come  to  the  support  of  the  School, 
and  if  the  Trustees  had  not  secured  students  themselves,  the 
enterprise  would  very  likely  have  died  in  its  birth. 

All  of  these  young  fellows,  nearly  all  of  them  from  lead- 
ing Connecticut  families,  were,  so  far  as  we  know,  boarders 
at  one  time  or  another  in  the  Pierson  household,  and  cer- 
tainly they  all  were  instructed  in  the  Rector's  house.  Though 
probably  not  more  than  a  dozen  or  so  were  under  instruction 
at  the  same  time,  the  good  wife  of  Rector  Pierson  must  have 
had  her  hands  full  with  this  group  of  active  and  hearty 
youngsters,  scholars  that  they  were.  Her  own  family  was 
large  (the  Piersons  seem  to  have  had  three  sons  and  six 
daughters  then  living^)  so  that  during  this  period  the  Kill- 
ingworth parsonage  must  have  been  a  lively  household  and, 

1  John,  the  youngest  son,  was  at  this  time  twelve  years  old.  In  addition, 
the  Killingworth  church  records  of  the  time  show  that  three  other  members 
of  the  family  were  church  members, — Abraham,  Jr.,  Sarah,  and  Mary. 


236 


The  Beginnings  of  Yale 


when  the  Trustees'  laws  were  not  too  rigidly  enforced,  merry 
enough.  How  the  good  Mrs.  Pierson  managed  to  look  out 
for  the  moral  and  physical  well-being  of  this  large  establish- 
ment is  not  on  record,  but  she  managed  it,  and  graciously 
avoided  the  domestic  pitfalls  that  had  been  the  undoing  of 
Mrs.  Nathaniel  Eaton  during  the  similarly  small  beginnings 
of  Harvard. 

Making  one  more  in  the  Pierson  family,  but  doubtless 
helping  to  manage  it,  the  Trustees  had  allowed  an  assistant 
to  the  Rector.  Young  Daniel  Hooker,  of  the  Farmington 
Hookers,  a  youthful  brother-in-law  of  James  Pierpont  and 
a  Harvard  graduate  of  1700,  had  come  to  the  Killingworth 
parsonage  in  this  capacity  in  1702,  but  had  resigned  at  the 
first  Commencement.  His  place  was  then  taken  by  John 
Hart,  the  former  Harvard  Sophomore  and  single  graduate 
of  the  Collegiate  School  in  1703,  who  became  Tutor  to  the 
two  lower  classes  and,  by  virtue  of  his  office,  "Sir  Hart"  to 
the  scholars  and  Killingworth  townspeople.  While  this 
young  Tutor  was  preparing  for  his  own  degree  of  B.A,  in 
1 702-1 703,  he  received  no  pay  for  his  services.  He  could, 
however,  collect  fines  for  disobediences  to  the  Trustees' 
regulations,  and  I  surmise  that  it  was  in  some  measure  due 
to  this  fact  that  the  records  for  that  year  show  that  there 
were  "discontents  in  some  of  the  students  for  the  time  being, 


The  Killingworth  Beginnings  237 

in  relation  to  the  present  tutor."  This  uprising, — the  first 
Yale  student  rebellion, — was  promptly  squelched  by  the 
Trustees,  who  upheld  Sir  Hart  and  tendered  him  their 
thanks  for  his  "hitherto  service"  and  £50  in  country  pay 
for  such  work,  in  the  School  as  he  should  thereafter  do.^  He 
left  in  1705  to  enter  the  ministry  in  East  Guilford,  and 
Phineas  Fiske  succeeded  him.  This  third  assistant  had  been 
one  of  the  three  graduates  of  1704  and  had  finished  a 
postgraduate  course  in  theology  with  Mr.  Pierson  the  year 
after  that. 


Though  we  have  to  depend  largely  upon  what  we  know 
of  the  Saybrook  days  that  followed,  we  may  picture  in  some 
degree  the  daily  round  at  Rector  Pierson's  double  establish- 
ment as  the  future  Yale  College  now  slowly  got  under  way. 
And  it  is  a  pleasant  picture  that  we  may  thus  visualize  for 
ourselves. 

As  the  sun  rises  over  the  level  Killingworth  salt  meadows 
from  Saybrook  way,  Rector  Pierson's  household  assembles 
in  the  great  living  "hall"  for  morning  prayers,  when  the 
Scriptures  are  read  by  the  minister  and  expounded,  accord- 

1  This  squelching  of  the  scholars  was  done  at  a  discreet  distance,  at  a 
Trustees'  meeting  at  Branford.  Rev.  Mr.  Pierpont  drew  up  a  "Memorial" 
to  the  students  at  this  meeting.  The  Colony,  he  said,  had  promoted  "a 
Collegiate  Society,"  and  had  given  the  ministers  in  charge  authority  to 
manage  it.  He  reminded  the  scholars  at  Killingworth  of  "the  hitherto  suc- 
cess &  hopeful  appearance  of  ye  enterprise,"  and  then  warned  them  "agst 
such  spirits  &  methods,  as  have  a  tendency  to  discourage  so  great  &  happy 
an  undertaking."  The  responsibility  of  choosing  the  Rector  and  Tutors  of 
the  School  had  not  been  left  to  the  scholars,  hints  Mr.  Pierpont,  but  to  the 
Trustees,  "as  those  accounted  capable  to  judg  who  are  most  fitt  for  such 
stations."  It  behooved  the  students,  therefore,  to  "pay  those  regards  wc  are 
proper"  to  their  instructors.  The  Memorial  closed  with  the  Trustees' 
assurance  of  "support  in  his  trust"  to  Sir  Hart,  and  that  was  the  last  that 
was  heard  of  the  uprising. 


The  Killingworth  Beginnings  239 

ing  to  the  Trustees'  laws,  in  the  ancient  tongue.  Classroom 
work  immediately  begins,  perhaps  as  early  as  half-past  six 
o'clock,  the  Pierson  children  romping  off  to  "Henery" 
Crane's  schoolhouse  through  the  garden  gate  at  the  same 
early  hour.  A  half-hour  comes  for  breakfast;  and,  this 
over,  the  young  Piersons  scamper  back  to  school.  Mistress 
Pierson  begins  her  household  'rounds,  jingling  "equipage" 
at  her  girdle,  and  the  Collegiate  School  reassembles  for  its 
serious  work  of  educating  Connecticut's  church  and  public 
servants. 

Pleasant  it  would  be  to  look  on  the  Pierson  household,  as 
it  thus  starts  its  day.  And  we  may  from  our  reading  of  the 
old  college  records.  Tutor  Fiske  takes  the  two  lower  classes 
of  a  half-dozen  boys  each  into  one  of  the  great  rooms  down- 
stairs, while  Rector  Pierson  calls  the  Senior  classes  into  his 
study,  where  are  his  father's  four  hundred-odd,  old-time 
theological  books  that  he  had  brought  from  Newark.  The 
morning  is  given  up  to  a  solid  drill  for  the  Freshmen  in 
Greek  and  Latin  grammar  and  composition,  in  translating 
Tully  and  Vergil,  and  in  elementary  Hebrew, — the  three 
studies  that  are  to  become  such  necessary  accomplishments 
in  a  later  life  of  public  service  to  an  orthodox  Calvinistic 
commonwealth.  The  Sophomores  proceed  further  in  the 
three  languages,  under  Sir  Fiske,  using  the  Psalms  for  their 
Hebrew  reading  and  the  New  Testament  for  their  Greek. 
And  Sir  Fiske  gives  them  a  taste  of  logic  from  the  Leyden 
Latin  manual  of  Burgersdicius  so  soon  as  their  command 
of  the  language  makes  it  possible.  The  Seniors  are  at  the 
same  time  reading  Latin  treatises  on  metaphysics  and  study- 
ing the  rudiments  of  mathematics  and  physics.  No  doubt 
Rector  Pierson,  seated  at  the  end  of  his  library  table  in  his 
wig  and  black  crepe  gown,  his  square-cut  broadcloth  waist- 
coat and  smallclothes,  examines  his  own  manuscript  treatise 
on  the  latter  subject  as  he  lectures.     This  treatise,  we  are 


240  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

told,  remained  the  College  text-book  on  "Physics"  for  many 
years,  and  has  since  been  lost,  with  all  its  copies  in  the  note- 
books of  the  scholars.  What  sort  of  science  it  taught,  we 
shall  see  in  a  later  chapter  of  these  rambling  chronicles. 

And  so  the  Collegiate  School  fell  into  its  daily  routine. 
Twice  a  week  the  Seniors  "dispute  syllogistically"  in  Latin, 
and  on  Saturdays  Dr.  Ames'  "Medulla"  is  recited  in  the 
same  tongue,  and  his  "cases  of  Conscience  sometimes." 
Rector  Pierson  exercises  all  of  his  students  in  rhetoric  and 
lectures  on  theology  to  them.  It  is  the  rule  of  the  School, 
as  it  has  been  for  decades  at  Harvard,  that  all  the  oral  work 
is  to  be  in  Latin,  as  well,  I  believe,  as  the  conversation  out 
of  classroom  hours  among  the  scholars  and  between  them 
and  their  Rector  and  Sir  Fiske.  The  leather-smocked-and- 
coated  village  bumpkins,  gaping  in  at  the  open  door  of  the 
Killingworth  parsonage  in  these  days,  must  have  conceived 
a  lofty  opinion  of  the  intellectual  heights  which  were  being 
scaled  within,  as  time  was  to  show  that  they  had  little 
patience  with  them. 

This  rigorous  morning  work,  we  may  suppose,  lets  up  for 
the  substantial  boiled  meat  and  vegetable  dinner  of  midday, 
with  Its  cider  and  beer  in  quantity,  and  then  comes  an  hour 
and  a  half  of  recreation,  doubtless  spent  under  the  tutor's 
eye  in  the  orchard  or  on  the  banks  of  the  near-by  Indian 
River,  where  was  good  fishing  In  season  and  much  dexterous 
crabbing  in  the  summer  time.  And  then  begins  the  after- 
noon drill,  ending  In  early  evening  prayers,  when  the  Scrip- 
tures again  are  read  and  expounded.  Then  the  day's  work 
is  over  except  for  those  who  desire  to  study  in  the  evening 
until  the  good  country  hour  of  nine  o'clock,  when  everyone 
has  to  be  in  bed,  with  "lights  out"  for  the  night  except  for 
Rector  Pierson's  own  postponed  sermon  writing  and  study, 
which  ends  at  eleven.  Twice  each  Sunday,  In  order  to  make 
orthodox  Connecticut  church  members  out  of  the  scholars 


The  Killingworth  Beginnings 


241 


under  Rector  Pierson's  charge,  the  Collegiate  School  boys 
troop  out  through  the  parsonage-garden  gate  and  up  across 
the  village  Green  to  the  Meeting-house,  there  to  sit  for 
more  long  hours  and  hear  their  Rector's  preaching  (he  was 
a  very  able  preacher,  it  is  said)  and  survey  the  assembled 
village  congregation.  It  was  bitter  cold  for  the  congrega- 
tion in  the  depth  of  winter  on  these  occasions,  and  more 
than  once,  no  doubt,  as  Judge  Sewall's  diary  reports 
happening  in  Boston,  even  the  broken  bread  froze  on  the 
communion  plates.  But  the  villagers  were  all  there,  and 
their  fair  daughters,  and  no  doubt  warm  hearts  beat  under 
the  caped  greatcoats  of  the  Pierson  scholars.  Under  such 
circumstances,  the  upperclassmen  frequently  must  have  had 
some  difficulty  in  paying  enough  attention  to  the  sermon  to 
repeat  it  to  Rector  Pierson,  as  they  were  supposed  to  do, 
immediately  afterwards. 


Jncfian  ^iyer. 


242  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

Outside  of  these  weekly  Meeting-house  occasions,  there 
was  doubtless  little  enough  in  the  village  life  to  distract  the 
attention  of  the  Collegiate  School  scholars.  Killingworth 
had  a  "Train-band,"  to  be  sure,  and  the  military  exercises 
of  this  small  company  on  the  Common  were  gala  affairs. 
The  great  men  of  the  village  seem  to  have  been  Deacon 
John  Griswold  and  Henry  Crane,  the  schoolmaster.  The 
latter  was  captain  of  the  "Train-band"  in  1704,  with  John 
Kelsey  for  his  Lieutenant,  and  Jonathan  Hull  for  Ensign. 
The  sergeants  were  John  Shether,  one  Sam  Stevens  and 
young  John  Crane.  Killingworth  received  a  patent,  with 
other  Colony  towns,  in  1703,  the  Proprietors'  Committee 
being  Captain  Crane,  Sam  Buell,  William  Stephens,  and 
John  Kelsey.  The  deputies  to  the  Lower  House  of  the 
Colony  Assembly  during  these  years  of  the  Collegiate 
School's  stay  at  Killingworth  were  Deacon  Griswold  (a 
more  or  less  perennial  election,  it  would  appear),  Sam 
Buell,  Robert  Lane,  and  Captain  Crane  the  schoolmaster. 
All  of  these  gentry  had  farms  along  the  Boston  Post-road 
on  either  side  of  the  village  Green,  and  possibly  some  of 
them  boarded  a  few  of  their  pastor's  scholars  when  the 
number  of  youths  at  the  school  became  too  great  for  Mrs. 
Pierson's  management.  The  Killingworth  folk,  however, 
were  a  poor  community.  From  the  settlement,  they  had 
had  all  that  they  could  do  to  support  themselves.  There 
would  seem  to  have  been  no  storekeepers  until  a  later 
period,  when  a  Dr.  Aaron  Eliot  kept  a  store  at  the  west 
end  of  the  village  street,  and  Josiah  Buell  began  his  horse- 
back journeys  to  Boston  to  bring  back  dry  goods.  By  1702 
the  villagers  were  still  sowing  their  own  flax  and  threshing, 
spinning,  and  weaving  it  into  shirts;  keeping  sheep,  and 
carding  and  weaving  the  wool  into  cloth  for  coats,  catching 
oysters  and  carrying  them  to  Hartford  in  exchange  for  rye 
for  bread.    Shellfish  and  shad,  the  latter  caught  in  the  river 


The  Killingworth  Beginnings  243 

mouths  by  nets,  formed  a  large  part  of  the  Collegiate  School 
students'  menus;  very  likely  the  scholars  themselves  helped 
to  furnish  Mrs,  Pierson's  table  by  using  Rector  Pierson's 
fish-net. 

With  varying  annual  attendances  during  these  first  six 
years, — eighteen  youths  in  all  were  graduated  with  their 
first  degrees  at  the  Killingworth  School, — matters  proceeded 
quietly  and  with  no  particularly  important  events,  so  far  as 
the  School  life  itself  was  concerned,  until  the  sudden  death 
of  Rector  Pierson,  on  March  5,  1707. 

The  Collegiate  School's  first  Rector  left  no  will,  but  the 
inventory  of  his  belongings  was  filed  by  his  sons  at  the  New 
London  probate  office.  It  came  to  a  round  £1,200,  a  sizable 
small  fortune  for  the  day.  From  it  we  may  gather  a  little 
of  the  personal  surroundings  in  which  Abraham  Pierson 
lived  at  Killingworth.  He  had  woolen  suits  and  a  set  of 
those  fashionable  linen  clothes  for  hot  weather,  concerning 
which  young  John  Winthrop  of  Boston  had  written  in  1706 
to  his  uncle,  Governor  Winthrop  of  Connecticut,  that  "it 
is  a  great  fashion  here  to  wear  West  India  Hnnens.  They 
make  pretty  light  cool  Wastcotes  and  britches."  He  had 
the  usual  bedsteads  and  beds,  woolen  bedding,  coverlets  and 
curtains,  of  the  day.  A  small  quantity  of  "armes  and  amu- 
nition"  is  listed, — doubtless  to  use  against  the  wolves  and 
wildcats  that  still  prowled  in  the  near-by  forests.  He  had 
"cubbards,  Tabels,  and  carpits  [heavy  table  coverings], 
chests,  boxes,  chaiers  and  formes  and  cushing" ;  pewter  and 
brass  household  utensils;  table  and  bed  linen,  fire-irons,  a 
razor,  sickles,  shears,  combs  and  knives  [no  forks  are 
mentioned]  ;  shoe-buckles,  buttons  [great  attention  was  paid 
to  buttons  in  these  days,  and  much  ingenuity  given  to  their 
design, — even  drawings  were  made  of  the  required  patterns 
by  some  dandles  and  dispatched  to  London  for  manufac- 
ture] ;  tobacco-box,  tongs,  chains,  and  money;  glass  bottles. 


244 


The  Beginnings  of  Yale 


money  scales,  leather,  "corned  woosted,  linen  yarns,  black 
stuff,  hollan  and  bags";  three  barrels  of  cider,  "tubbs,  spin- 
ing  wheals  and  other  lumber."  And  he  left  "neats  cattle, 
horses,  swine,  and  a  part  mantle,"  farmyard  tools  and 
tobacco-raising  implements,  and  yarn  for  "blankits  and  fish- 
net." His  Killingworth  house  was  put  down  at  £358,  and 
he  had  £100  worth  of  land  at  Milford  (probably  his  wife's, 
who  was  a  Milford  girl),  £80  worth  of  land  at  "Cauging- 
chauge,"  wherever  that  was,  and  the  Saybrook  house  and 
barn,  and  lands  and  meadow,  for  which  he  had  paid  £200 
and  had  never  been  permitted  to  occupy. 


^ierson 
irave -stone 


f  IM'ABRA*'  pi  ER50N  W- 
f  [THE-FIRST  RI£&T0!l#f1 

i^jKt  CONECTICUt: 


CHAPTER  II 


SAYBROOK  DAYS 


I 


N  spite  of  the  quiet  progress  of  events 
at  Rector  Pierson's  parsonage  in  Kill- 
ingworth,  the  enterprise  of  the  Colony 
college  had  by  no  means  been  the  suc- 
cess up  to  this  time  that  its  founders 
had  expected  for  it.  Financially,  it 
had  been  hard  sledding.  Harvard 
during  these  years  had  graduated 
eighty-three  scholars,  and,  in  the  year  in  which  Pierson's 
death  occurred,  was  to  graduate  as  many  as  the  Collegiate 
School  had  received  in  its  whole  six  years  to  that  time.  The 
predicted  enthusiastic  support  of  the  School  had  not  mate- 
rialized from  without  the  Colony,  and  from  Connecticut 
itself  very  few  boys  had  presented  themselves  without  being 
drummed  up  by  the  Trustees. 


246  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

But  another  and  more  difficult  question  than  this  had  been 
troubhng  the  Trustees  during  Rector  Pierson's  administra- 
tion. 

We  have  seen  how  the  selection  of  a  permanent  site  had 
carefully  been  side-tracked  at  the  organization  meeting  in 
1 701.  To  settle  this  matter  appears  to  have  been  the 
Trustees'  chief  business  throughout  Rector  Pierson's  regime. 
Thus  far  the  Trustees  had  compromised  on  Saybrook,  which 
was  therefore  the  official  location  of  the  School.  But  its 
settlement  there  had  depended  upon  Rector  Pierson's  re- 
moval from  Killingworth,  and  this  his  people,  exercising 
the  congregational  right  of  the  day  to  dismiss,  would  not 
permit.  Moreover,  the  Trustees  were  by  no  means  agreed 
upon  Saybrook  as  the  permanent  School  site.  Meeting 
New  London  County  opposition,  they  had  agreed  to  a  com- 
promise vote,  in  1702,  that  the  college  should  not  be  placed 
further  east  than  Saybrook,  nor  west  than  New  Haven. 
During  Pierson's  Rectorship,  the  site  question  had  been  left 
in  this  unsettled  state.  Yet  during  these  four  years  we  can 
follow  the  course  of  an  active  agitation  of  the  subject,  and 
this,  no  doubt,  made  many  of  the  Trustees'  meetings  lively 
affairs.  The  later  Hartford  action  to  secure  the  School  for 
some  up-river  site  was  not  to  become  noticeable  for  a  decade 
and  more,  so  that  we  may  suppose  that  the  Hartford 
Trustees  joined  with  those  from  New  London  during  this 
early  period  in  the  controversy,  to  remain  at  Saybrook. 
Though  James  Pierpont's  original  college  party  seem  to 
have  acquiesced  in  the  Saybrook  arrangement,  signs  are  not 
wanting  during  this  period  of  preparation  for  a  stand  on 
the  question  when  it  should  definitely  arise.  We  have  seen 
how  first  one  and  then  another  New  Haven  merchant  had 
been  elected  Treasurer  after  Nathaniel  Lynde  of  Saybrook 
had  declined  the  place.     Samuel  Russel  of  Branford  had 


Saybrook  Days  247 


been  elected  a  Trustee,  and,  while  the  next  two  vacancies 
had  been  filled  with  New  London  and  Fairfield  ministers,  for 
the  following  two  New  Haven  site  supporters  were  selected. 
In  the  meantime  Pierpont  acquiesced  in  such  efforts  as  were 
being  made  to  settle  Rector  Pierson  permanently  at 
Saybrook. 

And  these  had  been  numerous,  though  to  no  purpose. 
The  evidence  is  that  Rector  Pierson  had  been  ready  to 
remove  to  Saybrook,  so  far  as  his  personal  wishes  went,  but 
that  the  leaders  in  his  Killingworth  church  had  succeeded  in 
blocking  his  several  attempts  to  do  so.  No  doubt  the  offers 
of  the  Trustees  had  something  to  do  with  Pierson's  willing- 
ness to  move,  as,  with  his  large  and  growing  family,  his 
financial  prospects  as  a  settled  Rector  of  the  Collegiate 
School  at  Saybrook  promised  better  than  his  small  pay  of 
£60  as  the  Killingworth  minister.  Yet  I  imagine  that  his 
interest  in  science,  which  was  greater  than  usually  could  be 
found  in  the  Colony  at  the  time,  and  his  firm  belief  in  the 
possibilities  of  the  School,  were  even  stronger  inducements. 
In  the  hope  of  securing  a  release  from  his  congregation,  he 
bought  the  six  acres  at  Saybrook,  named  in  his  inventory, 
and  the  Trustees  voted  him  £100  to  build  a  house  thereon, 
if  he  would  remove.  But  the  opposition  of  his  people  had 
resulted  in  a  deadlock  that  had  lasted  until  his  unexpected 
death. 

Not  only  did  they  oppose  his  removal,  but  the  good  Kill- 
ingworth people  had  even  raised  serious  objections  to  the 
continuance  of  the  School  there,  and  to  their  minister  giving 
any  of  his  time  to  it.  All  of  which  doubtless  had  kept 
Rector  Pierson  in  a  sad  flutter  and  state  of  indecision.  He 
had  even  found  it  necessary  to  write  a  letter  to  his  congre- 
gation. In  this  he  says  that  he  "perceives  a  misapprehen- 
sion" among  them  as  to  "my  Answer  at  New  Haven  [when 
he  had  accepted  the  Rectorship]  to  the  Rev.  trustees  of  the 


248 


The  Beginnings  of  Yale 


Collegiate  School."  The  facts  were,  he  said,  that  they  had 
wanted  him  to  remove  to  Saybrook  and  "take  the  care  and 
conduck  of  the  school,"  and  "remove  to  the  place  by  them 
appointed  for  it."  As  to  this,  he  says,  "I  answered  as 
you  have  heard,  that  I  Durst  not  Deny  a  Divine  call  to 
attend  to  that  work  so  far  as  was  consistent  with  my  minis- 
terial work  among  you."  But  "Not  Discarning  a  present 
call  thereunto;  after  much  perswasion  and  pressing  to  it, 
my  Answer  was  to  act  therein  as  god  should  open  my  way." 
The  consent  of  his  people  was  necessary  to  his  removal  to 
Saybrook,  he  then  said.  He  might  not  secure  this  "generall 
and  joynt  consent,"  but  if  he  did  (and  the  good  Rector's 
business  side  here  rises  again)  he  should  "expect  your  in- 
gagement  by  sufficient  sureties  to  Reimburse  and  according 
to  agreement,  without  which  I  shall  not  part  with  the  house 
and  without  this  ingagement  I  shall  not  think  I  have  a  suffi- 


Saybrook  Days  249 


clent  expression  of  your  consent  to  my  removal."  This  letter 
"to  the  inhabitants  of  Killingworth"  was  dated  September 
21,  1705.  As  might  have  been  expected,  it  did  not  at  all 
meet  with  the  "joynt  consent"  of  the  canny  Killingworth 
deacons.  They  had  voted,  with  the  rest  of  the  townsfolk, 
to  give  him  as  their  minister  the  "town  house."  This  Pier- 
son,  desiring  to  leave  for  Saybrook,  now  proposed  to  keep 
permanently.  So  their  answer  had  not  been  unexpected. 
"We  do  declare,"  say  they,  "that  it  is  our  opinion  that  it  is 
not,  or  like  to  be  consistent  with  your  ministerial  worke 
amongst  us  to  attend  sd  school  as  heirherto,"  and  "we  shall 
not  endeavor  to  act  in  that  matter  any  firther  than  we  have 
allready  Don." 

The  unfortunate  Rector,  thus  impaled  upon  the  two  horns 
of  this  unexpected  dilemma,  had  found  himself  agreed,  on 
the  one  hand,  to  be  the  Collegiate  School  Rector  and  to  settle 
in  Saybrook  (where  he  had  now  invested  in  land  with  that 
idea  in  mind)  and,  on  the  other,  under  contract  to  remain 
as  the  pastor  of  the  Killingworth  people  who  were  now  pro- 
ceeding to  tell  the  Trustees  to  take  their  school  out  of  the 
village  and  secure  another  Rector. 

Matters  had  thus  remained  for  the  first  four  years  of 
Mr.  Pierson's  Rectorship.  In  1706  they  came  to  a  natural 
crisis.  In  that  year  the  Trustees  (on  the  Rector's  "re- 
quest") voted  to  ask  the  town  of  Killingworth  to  allow 
"the  Collegiate  School  to  be  &  remain  hear  under  the  care 
&  conduct  of  the  Rev.  Mr.  Pierson."  The  town's  reply 
was  an  abrupt  one.  It  was  not  "to  allowe  that  the  School 
should  be  keept  hear  as  it  has  been."  The  Killingworth 
village  worthies,  however,  seem  to  have  been  willing  to 
reconsider  this  action,  doubtless  on  Mr.  Pierson's  final 
urging.  For,  early  in  the  winter  of  1 705-1 706,  they  made 
"choyce  of  Decon  Griswold,  Robert  Lane,  Sarjts  Shether, 
Stevens  and  John  Crane,"  as  a  "Comity  to  consider  of,  and 


250  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

draw  up  sum  terms  or  proposalls  for  the  town  to  consider 
of  with  Respect  to  the  allowance  of  the  Collegiate  School 
Being  hear  under  the  care  and  conduct  of  Mr.  Pierson." 
It  was  while  these  "proposalls"  were  being  laid  before  his 

flock  by  Rector  Pierson  that  his  death  had  occurred. 

f 

II 

Conditions  in  the  Colony  found  the  Trustees  unprepared 
to  elect  a  new  resident  Rector  after  Mr.  Pierson's  death, — 
a  fact  which  goes  to  show,  I  think,  the  rather  complete 
dependence  of  the  enterprise  up  to  that  time  upon  Abraham 
Pierson.  Nothing  had  come  of  the  effort  to  secure  sub- 
scriptions from  the  Colony,  and  there  was  therefore  little 
or  no  money  in  Treasurer  Alling's  hands  in  New  Haven 
with  which  to  settle  a  competent  master.  The  problem  was 
temporarily  solved  by  the  acceptance  by  the  Rev.  Samuel 
Andrew,  now  forty-six  years  old,  of  the  Rectorship  pro 
tern,  and  of  the  charge  of  a  part  of  the  scholars, — the 
Senior  classes, — at  his  parsonage  in  Milford.  The  Killing- 
worth  estabhshment  was  broken  up,  and  Phineas  Fiske,  of 
the  Class  of  1704,  who  had  the  previous  year  succeeded 
John  Hart  as  Tutor,  went  over,  bag  and  baggage  and  with 
the  remaining  scholars,  to  Saybrook,  probably  at  first  to  the 
house  of  the  now  elderly  Rev.  Thomas  Buckingham,  who 
must  have  agreed  to  give  a  general  oversight  to  them.  That 
this  was  a  highly  fortunate  circumstance  for  the  Collegiate 
School  may  be  gathered  from  even  the  little  we  know  of 
this  Saybrook  minister.  He  was,  apparently,  energetic 
when  it  fell  upon  him  to  take  action  for  the  good  of  his 
community,  as  was  shown  in  his  galloping  about  to  rouse 
the  village  when  Andros  arrived.  From  an  appealing  letter 
to  Governor  Saltonstall,  asking  him  to  approach  in  his  stead 
Governor  Winthrop  for  a  gift  to  the  School  ("I  have  neither 


Saybrook  Days  251 


Skill  nor  Corage  in  manageing  such  affairs,"  he  wrote),  it 
is  likely  that  he  was  less  energetic  in  business  matters.  But 
he  was  "kindly  in  his  manner,  dignified  and  scholarly,  and 
his  councils  were  received  with  deference  both  by  the  tutors 
and  the  students."  It  is  said  that  the  Collegiate  School 
youths  "loved  him  like  a  father."  He  practically  filled  the 
place  of  Rector  Pierson  until  his  death  two  years  later, 
though  Samuel  Andrew  was  the  nominal  head  of  the 
academy. 

Samuel  Andrew's  acceptance  of  this  responsibility  was 
no  doubt  encouraged  by  James  Pierpont.  Yet  the  Rev.  Mr. 
Andrew  was  well  adapted  for  the  position,  so  far  as  the 
educational  side  went.  He  had  been  a  Tutor  and  Fellow  at 
Harvard,  and  had  been  forced  to  assume  the  chief  responsi- 
bilities of  that  college  during  the  unsettled  administrations 
of  Presidents  Oakes  and  Rogers.  In  that  capacity  he  had 
been  Tutor  to  James  Pierpont,  Samuel  Russel,  and  Noadiah 
Russell  of  the  Class  of  1681,  and  to  Joseph  Webb  of  the 
Class  of  1684, — all  of  whom  were  now  fellow  Trustees  of 
the  Collegiate  School  with  him.  As  matters  were  to  turn 
out,  Mr.  Andrew  was  to  remain  Rector  pro  tern  for  the 
next  twelve  years;  during  that  period,  while  a  good 
teacher,  he  showed  no  great  aptitude  for  the  administrative 
side  of  his  office. 

Under  these  unsatisfactory  conditions,  the  divided  Col- 
legiate School  jogged  along  for  the  next  few  years,  losing 
ground  rather  steadily,  until  for  a  series  of  four  years  but 
two  or  three  scholars  were  graduated  annually,  and  the 
Trustees  found  themselves  facing  serious  difficulties. 

That  Saybrook  Point  was  not  a  particularly  good  place 
for  such  a  school  was  soon  to  become  apparent.  The  long 
sandy  road  that  led  across  the  marshes  to  Old  Saybrook 
Point  continued  to  the  water  front,  where  there  was  safe 
anchorage   and   a   shelving  beach.     There  were   probably 


252  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

less  than  twenty  houses,  at  this  time,  on  and  about  the  six 
squares  of  Gardiner's  early  town,  and  about  as  many  more 
to  the  north  and  on  the  mainland.  The  Collegiate  School 
scholars  must  have  become  well  acquainted  with  the  land- 
marks of  the  Point:  with  Lion  Gardiner's  old  windmill, 
the  Black  Horse  Inn,  the  ruins  of  the  first  earth  fort  and 
the  stone  and  woodwork  of  the  second  fort  facing  the 
Sound,  with  Lady  Fenwick's  tomb,  and  the  sunny  open 
Green  in  the  middle  of  the  village,  across  which,  from  the 
main  village  street  on  the  west  side,  could  be  seen  Mr, 
Buckingham's  parsonage  under  its  elm  trees. 

During  this  time  we  do  not  even  know,  however,  where 
the  declining  academy  was  housed.  The  small  Calvinistic 
library  had  likely  remained  in  Mr.  Buckingham's  Say- 
brook  parsonage  study  and,  for  a  time  at  least.  Sir  Fiske 
(as  the  Tutor's  title  was)  probably  held  his  classes  there, 
the  few  scholars  boarding  about  the  village  as  best  they 
could.  Treasurer  Nathaniel  Lynde  had  early  offered  his 
house  and  lot,  facing  east  on  the  town  Green  and  across 
it  from  the  minister's.  The  deed,  however,  had  not  been 
passed,  but  now,  in  1708,  when  the  School  appeared  to  have 
definitely  settled  at  Saybrook,  it  was  duly  executed,  and  the 
Trustees  came  into  possession  of  the  Lynde  property. 

Tradition  has  it  that  this  house  of  Nathaniel  Lynde  was 
a  unique  structure,  some  "eighty  feet  long"  (very  likely 
made  up  of  a  main  structure  and  a  wing,  as  many  of  the 
well-to-do  merchants  of  the  day  built),  with  sanded  oak- 
plank  floors,  oil-paper  windows,  and  great  stone  fireplaces. 
Saybrook  stories  have  it  that  this  elongated  structure,  or 
"college  house,"  was  the  dormitory  of  the  two  tutors,  Sir 
Fiske  and  James  Hale,  and  likewise  the  scholars'  recitation 
hall.  While  he  was  tutor  there,  Phineas  Fiske  married  a 
Saybrook  girl,  the  daughter  of  the  village  blacksmith  of 
Essex,  and  no  doubt  set  up  his  Penates  in  some  upper  rooms 


254  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

of  this  Lynde  estabhshment.^  In  1709,  however,  James 
Hale  retired,  and  Azariah  Mather,  the  son  of  the  aged 
Windsor  Trustee,  and  four  years  graduated,  took  his  place, 
preaching  between  his  college  duties  at  the  Saybrook  Meet- 
ing-house after  the  death  of  the  Rev.  Thomas  Buckingham 
in  that  year.  When  he  resigned  in  the  following  year,  to 
become  the  regular  Saybrook  minister,  Joseph  Noyes,  a 
year  out  of  the  Collegiate  School,  became  his  successor. 
Noyes,  in  the  time  to  come,  was  to  be  one  of  the  most  im- 
portant factors  in  early  Yale  history.  He  was  the  son  of 
old  James  Noyes  of  Stonington  and  nephew  of  Moses 
Noyes  of  Lyme,  who  had  also  by  this  time  become  a  Trustee. 
He  "had  made  himself  very  much  master  of  the  learning 
taught  at  College  in  that  day."  Upon  the  retirement  as 
Tutor  of  Phineas  Fiske,  in  17 13,  Sir  Joseph  Noyes,  assisted 
by  his  classmate,  William  Russell  (a  son  of  Noadiah  Rus- 
sell), became  the  mainstay  of  the  struggling  School,  and 
continued  as  such  until  he  became  the  successor  of  James 
Pierpont  in  New  Haven  two  years  later  and  married  his 
daughter. 

During  these  years  the  Treasurer  of  the  School  found  it 
one  of  his  chief  duties, — perhaps  his  most  onerous  one, — 
to  feed  the  dozen  or  twenty  youths  who  came  for  their  in- 
struction to  the  Lynde  college-house.  Treasurer  Ailing 
commissioned  Captain  Browne  of  the  "Speedwell"  for  a 
number  of  these  necessaries.^  Thus  fifty  bushels  of  wheat 
and  as  many  more  of  rye  were  shipped  from  New  Haven 
to  Boston  to  raise  money  for  this  purpose  in  1707,  and  a 

1  Apocryphal  legends  concerning  this  house  are  to  the  effect  that  it  was 
built  for  the  Collegiate  School  and  was  one  story  high.  But  the  evidence 
is  that  it  was  a  building  that  had  come  into  Lynde's  possession,  and  was 
given  by  him  to  the  School. 

2  Professor  Dexter  has  published,  in  the  New  Haven  Colony  Historical 
Society  Papers,  an  exhaustive  account  of  Captain  Browne's  business. 


Say  brook  Days  2^5 


couple  of  casks  of  "green  wine"  went  to  the  School,  or  the 
"college,"  as  Captain  Browne  called  it.  More  green  wine 
was  purchased  later,  and  twenty  yards  of  stuff  for  bed 
curtains  (probably  for  Tutor  Mather  and  his  bride),  and 
some  brass  rings,  a  pewter  basin,  a  pound  of  alum,  a  pound 
of  nutmegs,  and  seventeen  yards  of  silk  crepe  for  gowns 
for  the  Tutors.  A  year  later  Captain  Browne  sold  some 
goods  for  a  hogshead  of  rum,  costing  £12  i6s.,  for  the 
scholars.  John  Dixwell  of  Boston,  the  silversmith,  had 
been  acting  as  an  agent  for  the  School,  and  the  proceeds  of 
a  sale  of  corn  and  rye  in  the  Boston  market  are  paid  over 
by  him.  Some  blue  calico  is  ordered, — the  first  mention  of 
that  color  in  Yale  annals, — a  hair-sieve,  a  brass  skillet,  a 
steel  candlestick,  and  some  lace  thread.  Captain  Browne's 
later  business  for  Treasurer  Ailing  appears  largely  to  have 
consisted  in  carrying  grain  to  Boston,  the  value  of  which 
was  paid  over  by  School  agents  there  besides  Dixwell. 

Ill 

I  suppose  that  it  was  about  this  time  that  the  course  of 
study  was  made  four  years. ^  The  School  year  began  and 
ended  at  the  Saybrook  Commencements  in  September,  and 
there  were  no  long  vacations.  From  a  letter  written  about 
this  time,  we  find  that  the  Senior  classes  closed  their  studies 
when  the  hot  weather  came  on  in  mid-July,  and  then  ap- 
peared before  the  Tutors  and  such  of  the  Trustees  as  could 
come  to  Saybrook,  to  be  "proved  and  approved"  for  pres- 

1  The  course  had  been  set  for  four  years  for  a  first  and  three  years  for  a 
second  degree  at  the  Saybrook  organization  of  the  Trustees.  It  had,  how- 
ever, been  voted  that  if  any  of  the  scholars  "shall  demand  Their  Diploma  or 
Licence  at  the  Expiration  of  3  years  and  from  thence  of  2  full  years,"  they 
could  have  it  if  they  were  duly  qualified.  Practically  all  of  the  first  stu- 
dents of  the  Collegiate  School  took  their  bachelor's  degree  under  this  special 
arrangement. 


Saybrook  Days  257 


entation  as  candidates  for  their  degrees.  Joseph  Noyes 
in  17 14  writes  to  Rector  Andrew  to  this  effect,  and  pro- 
ceeds to  ask  Mr.  Andrew  to  "appoint  them  their  commence- 
ment work,"  that  is,  the  Latin  theses  on  assigned  theological 
and  metaphysical  topics  which,  as  at  Harvard,  they  were 
publicly  to  pronounce  upon  their  graduation.  When  the 
September  Commencements  came,  there  were  small  gather- 
ings at  Mr.  Buckingham's  house,  and,  after  his  death,  prob- 
ably in  the  village  Meeting-house,  over  which  Rector 
Andrew  presided. 

While  these  Commencements  had  been  very  quiet  at  first, 
in  order  to  permit  the  Collegiate  School  to  get  under  way 
without  attracting  uncomfortable  notice  in  London,  the  fear 
of  this  interference  had  rapidly  died  out  by  17 10,  and  the 
Trustees  had  voted  to  allow  a  little  more  publicity  to  them. 
So  that  I  suppose  that  now  these  annual  Collegiate  School 
events  were  of  some  small  Colony  interest,  attended  by 
perhaps  a  score  of  near-by  coast  and  river-town  ministers, 
by  many  of  the  Saybrook  and  Essex  and  Lyme  villagers,  and 
even,  on  occasion,  by  the  Governor  himself. 

Benjamin  Lord  of  the  Class  of  17 14,  later  to  be  a  Tutor 
for  a  brief  time  in  the  School,  years  afterward  described 
those  early  Commencements.  They  were  held  in  the  Say- 
brook Meeting-house.  The  Rector  presided,  flanked,  in  the 
deacons'  seats,  no  doubt,  by  such  Trustees  as  could  come, 
in  their  full-bottomed  wigs,  white  bands,  black  coats  and 
smallclothes,  black  stockings  and  shoes  with  silver  buckles. 
Long  sessions  were  held,  both  morning  and  afternoon  of  the 
great  day.  Prayers  began  and  closed  these  ceremonies,  and 
between  times  the  "disputations"  were  held,  in  Latin. 
Toward  evening  the  Commencement  closed  with  the  grant- 
ing of  the  degrees.  Says  Benjamin  Lord:  "The  Rector 
gave  degrees  much  in  the  present  form  (no  pro  modo 
Anglice  then)  ;  when  he  came  to  ye  words  hunc  Librum,  he 


258  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

gave  ye  candidates  a  little  book  into  their  hands,  which 
they  returned  for  ye  next,  for  they  came  up  only  two  by  two ; 
no  Diaplomas  were  delivered  then.  The  Rector  previous  to 
the  giving  of  Degrees  ask'd  the  consent  of  the  Trustees, 
saying,  placetne  vobis,  etc.,  to  which  they  answered,  placet, 
placet."^ 

Of  the  thirteen  boys  who  had  been  given  their  Bachelor 
of  Arts  degrees  under  Abraham  Pierson's  direction,  eleven 
had  either  returned  to  him  for  graduate  study  in  theology 
or  had  immediately  set  about  preparation  for  the  pulpit  by 
placing  themselves  under  their  home-town  ministers,  these 
being  in  most  cases,  of  course,  Trustees  of  the  Collegiate 
School.  During  the  succeeding  ten  years  the  proportion  of 
ministers  to  laymen  among  the  graduates  was  hardly 
smaller,  thirty  out  of  the  forty-two  graduates  of  that  period 
going  into  the  ministry.^  So  that  the  purpose  of  the 
founders,  to  supply  a  home  ministry  through  the  Collegiate 
School,  was  beginning  to  be  carried  out.  What  sort  of  a 
place  the  Connecticut  at  this  time  was,  into  which  these 
Collegiate  School  youths  went  for  their  life  work,  and  what 
were  its  social  and  educational  limitations,  may  now  be 
briefly  considered. 

1  The  earliest  Collegiate  School  diploma  granted  for  a  Bachelor's  Degree 
that  has  been  preserved  is  that  of  John  Hart  of  the  Class  of  1703.    It  reads: 

Omnibus  et  Singulis  Has  praesentes  perlecturis  Salutem  in  Deo.  Vobis 
Notum  sit,  quod  lohannera  Hart  Candidatum,  Primum  in  Artibus  gradum 
competentem,  tam  probavimus,  quam  approbavimus:  quem  Examine  suffi- 
ciente  praevio  approbatum,  Nobis  placet  Titulo  Graduq  Artium  Liberalium 
Baccalaurei ;  adornare  et  condecorare.  Cuj^  hoc  Instrumentum  in  membrane 
scriptura  Testimonium  sit.  A  Gymnasio  Academico  Connecticutensi  17 
Calend.  Octobr.  1703. 

Abrah.  Pierson,  Rect. 
Moses  Noyes       Thomas  Buckingham 
noadiah  russel 
Inspectores. 

2  This  proportion  would  be  larger  if  one  counts  in  the  number  who  studied 
theology  but  did  not  become  ministers. 


0^^^:. 


i/jiorgcin  house 
in  UJinfon 


CHAPTER  III 
THE  CONNECTICUT  COLONY  IN  1701-1714 

I 


:!?^;i.'i<fft!fi»n«WMniwin'ngHiHiiimw!W,! 


f  ECTOR  PIERSON'S  cider  and  to- 
bacco doubtless  had  played  their  part 
In  the  hospitality  which,  as  was  the 
I  case  with  all  of  the  country  ministers 
I  of  the  day,  he  showed  to  passers-by  on 
i  the  Boston  Post-road.  And  no  doubt 
||  these  occasions  were  infrequent  enough 
1  to  the  Killingworth  minister,  as  they 
were  to  Thomas  Buckingham  and  the  Collegiate  School 
Tutors  at  Saybrook  in  the  years  just  after  his  death.  Com- 
panionship after  their  kind  was  not  within  easy  reach  for 


26o  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

the  educated  men  of  Connecticut  of  Rector  Pierson's  day. 
For  we  should  remember,  in  calling  to  mind  these  times, 
that  there  was  then  a  wide  gap  between  the  intellectual 
interests  of  the  educated  college  man  and  the  rest  of  his 
community.  Scholars  were  few  and  far  between,  and  were 
men  of  mark.  Forming  a  small  social  circle  about  them 
were  the  well-to-do  farmers  and  merchants,  often  traveled 
men  and  chosen  to  be  Deputies  in  the  General  Court.  But 
below  these  came  the  general  run  of  the  population,  small 
farmers  and  hired  men,  country  bumpkins,  slaves,  and  vil- 
lage riffraff  of  narrow  mental  horizons  and  uncouth  ways. 
We  find  this  great  mass  of  the  common  people  of  the  Colony 
at  that  date,  graphically  portrayed  by  the  Boston  school- 
ma'am,  Madam  Knight.  Of  "the  upper  class  she  remarks 
that  "many  of  them  are  good,  Sociable  people,  and  I  hope 
Religious  too;  but  a  little  too  much  Independent  in  their 
principals."  She  found  them  living  "Generally  very  well 
and  comfortable  in  their  families.  But  too  Indulgent 
(especially  the  farmers)  to  their  slaves:  suffering  too  great 
familiarity  from  them,  permitting  them  to  sit  at  Table  and 
eat  with  them  (as  they  say  to  save  time),  and  into  the  dish 
goes  the  black  hoof  as  freely  as  the  white  hand."  The  mer- 
chants, or  small  village  storekeepers,  the  sprightly  Boston 
traveler  found,  had  high  social  standing  and  were  looked 
up  to  with  great  awe  by  the  country  people  who  came  in  to 
trade  and  run  up  bills.  These  "merchants"  seem  to  have 
carried  matters  with  a  high  hand.  "They  rate  (says 
Madam  Knight)  their  Goods  according  to  the  time  and 
spetia  they  pay  in :  viz.  Pay,  mony.  Pay  as  mony,  and  trust- 
ing. Pay  is  Grain,  Pork,  Beef,  &c.  at  the  prices  set  by  the 
General  Court  that  Year:  mony  is  pieces  of  Eight,  Ryalls,  or 
Boston  or  Bay  shillings  (as  they  call  them),  or  Good  hard 
money,  as  sometimes  silver  coin  is  termed  by  them;  also 
Wampum,  viz.  Indian  beads  which  serves  for  change.     Pay 


The  Connecticut  Colony  in  1 701 -17 14        261 

as  mony  is  provisions,  as  aforesaid  one  Third  cheaper  than 
as  the  Assembly  or  General  Court  sets  it ;  and  Trust  as  they 
and  the  mercht  agree  for  time." 

Hardly  a  better  picture  of  Rector  Pierson's  times  could 
come  down  to  us  than  such  a  little  scene  as  this  good  lady 
describes  as  occurring  at  a  New  Haven  tradesman's  shop. 
"Being  at  a  merchants  house,"  she  writes  in  1704,  "in  comes 
a  tall  country  fellow,  wth  his  alfogees  full  of  Tobacco;  for 
they  seldom  Loose  their  Cudd,  but  keep  Chewing  and 
Spitting  as  long  as  they'r  eyes  are  open, — he  advanc't  to 
the  midle  of  the  Room,  makes  an  Awkward  Nodd,  and 
spitting  a  Large  deal  of  Aromatick  Tincture,  he  gave  a 
scrape  with  his  shovel  like  shoo,  leaving  a  small  shovel  full 
of  dirt  on  the  floor,  made  a  full  stop,  Hugging  his  own 
pretty  Body  with  his  hands  under  his  arms,  Stood  staring 
rown'd  him,  like  a  Catt  let  out  of  a  Baskett.  At  last,  like 
the  creature  Balaam  Rode  on,  he  opened  his  mouth  and 
said:  have  you  any  Ribinen  for  Hat-bands  to  sell  I  pray? 
The  Questions  and  Answers  about  the  pay  being  past,  the 
Ribin  is  bro't  and  opened.  Bumpkin  Simpers,  cryes  its  con- 
founded Gay  I  vow;  and  beckning  to  the  door,  in  comes 
Jone  Tawdry,  dropping  about  50  curtsees,  and  stands  by 
him :  he  shows  her  the  Ribin.  Law,  You,  sais  shee,  its  right 
Gent,  do  You  take  it,  tis  dreadfully  pretty.  Then  she  en- 
quires, have  You  any  hood  silk  I  pray?  wch  being  brought 
and  bought,  Have  You  any  thred  silk  to  sew  it  wth  says 
shee,  wch  being  accomodated  wth  they  Departed.  They 
Generaly  stand  after  they  come  in  a  great  while  speachless, 
and  sometimes  dont  say  a  word  till  they  are  askt  what  they 
want."  The  village  storekeepers  on  such  occasions  seem  to 
have  given  the  purchasers  no  choice,  but  bring  out  what  is 
ordered. 

And  we  have  still  another  cue  from  Madam  Knight  about 
the   Connecticut   people   of    1701.     They  were,   she   con- 


262  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

sidered,  generally  rather  clever,  though  provincial.  "These 
people,"  she  wrote,  "have  as  Large  a  portion  of  mother 
witt,  and  sometimes  a  Larger,  than  those  who  have  bin 
brought  up  in  Citties;  But  for  want  of  emprovements.  Ren- 
der themselves  almost  Ridiculos,  as  above.  They  are  gen- 
eraly  very  plain  in  their  dress,  throuout  all  ye  Colony, 
as  I  saw,  and  follow  one  another  in  their  modes;  that  You 
may  know  where  they  belong,  especialy  the  women,  meet 
them  where  you  will." 

While  Madam  Knight,  fresh  from  Londonized  Boston, 
had  found  Connecticut  people  more  sedately  dressed  and 
provincial  in  their  fashions,  a  few  of  the  leading  people 
were  now  dressing  in  rather  more  garish  costumes  than 
their  Puritan  fathers.  The  country-folk  were  plain  enough, 
though  a  deserting  soldier  just  before  this  time  was  adver- 
tised as  wearing  a  periwig.  Wigs,  however,  were  now  the 
universal  custom  throughout  New  England,  and  no  doubt 
were  worn  by  the  more  progressive  provincials  in  Connecti- 
cut. Long,  square-cut  coats  were  in  style,  with  great  cuffs, 
and,  for  the  more  elegant  dandies,  gold-  and  silver-embroi- 
dered lapels.  The  earlier  high  Puritan  hats  had  gone  out 
for  lower  crowned  but  still  broad-brimmed  cloth  or  fur  hats. 
Embroidered  waistcoats  were  coming  in.  The  women  of 
the  day,  in  spite  of  the  Rev.  Solomon  Stoddard's  thunderous 
denunciations  from  remote  Northampton,  were  beginning  to 
wear  hooped  petticoats  of  "tabby"  silks,  charmingly  colored 
and  embroidered,  as  well  as  the  soft  flowered  dimities  of 
Pierpont's  early  New  Haven  day  fashions.  We  have  seen 
how  Governor  Fitz-John  Winthrop,  of  New  London,  had 
been  one  of  the  most  famous  of  Connecticut  dandies.  He 
had  been  succeeded  in  1707  as  Governor  by  his  pastor, 
Gurdon  Saltonstall,  but  Winthrop's  official  sanction  to  the 
Boston  styles  (which  he  kept  in  touch  with  through  a  tre- 
mendously serious  correspondence  on  the  modes  with  his 


The  Connecticut  Colony  in  1701-1714        263 

nephew,  a  Boston  macaroni  of  the  times)  must  have  had  its 
effect  on  the  respectable  and  well-to-do  Connecticut  gentle- 
men of  his  circles.  Muffs  were  still  the  fashion  for  both 
men  and  women,  and  in  171 2  the  London  notion  of  neck- 
laces and  neck-scarfs  was  coming  in.  Great  wearers  of 
fancy  gloves  and  of  innumerable  rings  were  these  good  Con- 
necticut folk  of  the  Collegiate  School's  early  years.  Rings 
were  still  not  given  at  marriages,  in  conformity  with  Puritan 
prejudices,  but  they  were,  in  extraordinary  profusion,  at 
funerals,  where  they  were  considered  such  perquisites  that 
Judge  Sewall  sometimes  set  it  down  in  his  diary  as  a  great 
disappointment  if  he  arrived  too  late  to  receive  one.  I 
imagine  that  the  zest  for  fashionable  clothes  was  a  con- 
siderable factor  in  the  daily  lives  of  the  Connecticut  folk 
of  these  Saybrook  days  of  the  Collegiate  School.  Perhaps 
this  was  one  more  phase  of  the  pendulum-swing  away  from 
the  early  Puritan  rigidity  that  was  showing  itself  now  in 
other  things  besides  the  importation  of  London  fashions, 
games  and  dances.  Benjamin  Tompson,  the  "learned 
schoolmaster  &  physician,"  who  preceded  Ezekiel  Cheever 
in  the  Charlestown  Town  School,  had  showed  some  of  the 
current  conservative  feeling  about  this  change  of  manners 
in  his  "New  England's  Crisis": 

Deep-skirted  doublets,  puritanlclc  capes, 
Which  now  would  render  men  like  upriglit  apes, 
Was  comlier  wear,  our  wiser  fathers  thought. 
Than  the  cast  fashions  from  all  Europe  brought. 
'Twas  in  those  daycs  an  honest  grace  would  liold 
Till  an  hot  pudding  grew  at  heart  a  cold. 
And  men  had  hettcr  stomachs  at  religion. 
Than  I  to  capon,  turkey-cock,  or  pigeon; 

to  which  he  harmoniously  added,  as  a  gentle  barb  against 
the  gossiping  ladies: 


264  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

When  honest  sisters  met  to  pray,  not  prate, 
About  their  own  and  not  their  neighbor's  state. 

And  Timothy  Woodbridge,  now  one  of  the  Collegiate 
School  Trustees,  had  had  his  say  about  the  changes  in 
manners,  also  in  verse.  We  have  in  a  complimentary  poem 
to  a  Boston  minister  this  poetical  effort  of  the  Hartford 
minister  and  Collegiate  School  Trustee : 

Here  be  rare  lessons  set  for  us  to  read, 

That  offsprings  are  of  such  a  goodly  breed. 

The  dead  ones  here  so  much  alive  are  made, 

We  think  them  speaking  from  blest  Eden's  shade. 

Hark  how  they  check  the  madness  of  this  age. 

The  growth  of  pride,   fierce  lust  and  worldly  rage; 

They  tell  we  shall  to  clam-banks  come  again. 

If  heaven  still  doth  scourge  us  all  in  vain. 

II 

It  was  among  people  of  this  provincial  and  yet  fashion- 
able sort,  and  for  the  higher  education  of  their  sons,  that 
the  Collegiate  School  had  been  founded,  and  had  selected  its 
course  of  studies. 

And  this  was,  naturally,  as  limited  in  its  interests  as  was 
the  intellectual  horizon  of  the  Colony  itself.  The  leaders 
in  the  New  England  settlements  had,  indeed,  been  well- 
educated  men.  Among  the  numerous  Cambridge  graduates 
and  the  fewer  Oxford  men  of  the  original  settlers  had  been 
men  who,  even  in  the  old  country,  had  high  reputations  for 
learning  and  ability.  Their  successors,  however,  had  not 
had  their  advantages,  but  had  received  the  education  that 
the  limited  intellectual  resources,  both  in  tutors  and  books, 
of  the  pioneer  life  of  the  colonies  afforded. 

And  this,  compared  either  with  the  contemporaneous  uni- 
versity education  in  England,  or  with  the  broader  range  of 
studies  which  were  later  on  to  be  adopted  at  home,  was 


The  Connecticut  Colony  in  1701-1714        265 


(S/oiPernor  Jreofs  ^"^ 
nouse  in  MuTorak 


narrow  enough.  Absorbed  in  the  poHtical  and  rehgious 
struggles  of  these  pioneer  days,  harassed  by  the  French  and 
Indian  wars,  their  energies  taken  up  by  the  hard  life  of  the 
plantations,  the  common  run  of  this  sturdy  New  England 
people  had  had  little  time,  if  inclination,  for  keeping  abreast 
with  the  intellectual  currents  abroad.  We  have  seen  how,  in 
Connecticut,  even  the  common  schools  had  been  neglected. 
This  had  been  true  throughout  New  England.  The  most 
that  Harvard  (supported,  as  it  was,  by  the  larger  circle  of 
English-university-bred  men  of  Massachusetts),  the  single 
New  England  college  up  to  this  time,  had  been  able  to  do 
had  been  to  carry  its  youth  through  pretty  elementary 
studies  of  the  three  ancient  languages,  through  elementary 
arithmetic  and  some  surveying,  and  a  course  in  logic  and 


266  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

a  metaphysics  which  was  still  cobwebbed  in  long  outgrown 
systems.  Calvlnistic  theology  and  a  quaintly  unsophisticated 
study  of  natural  laws  called  "Physicks,"  completed  the 
higher  education  of  this  early  day.  The  best-educated  men 
of  the  time  were  thus  limited  to  an  extremely  narrow  and 
outgrown  intellectual  order.^  The  general  run  of  the 
people  were  not  educated  at  all  beyona  a  reading  knowl- 
edge of  their  own  tongue — and  even  then  not  in  all  cases. 
The  briefest  survey  of  the  intellectual  horizon  of  1701  will 
show  how  restricted  it  was. 

So  far  as  an  Interest  in  literature  went,  there  was  little 
enough  of  It  In  the  New  England  of  Rector  Pierson  and  his 
fellow  Trustees.  As  had  been  natural,  the  first  books  that 
had  been  written  here  had  been  reports  by  the  best-educated 
of  the  first  settlers  on  conditions  In  New  England,  and 
accounts  of  happenings,  for  the  benefit  of  friends  left  at 
home.  WInthrop's  engaging  letters  to  his  wife,  and  Brad- 
ford's history,  were  of  this  period.  Then  had  followed  a 
long  series  of  theological  treatises,  such  as  John  Norton's 
widely-read  "Orthodox  Evangelist,"  Thomas  Hooker's 
"The  Soul's  Implantation,"  John  Cotton's  famous  "The 
Bloody  Tenant  Washed  and  Made  White  In  the  Blood  of 
the  Lamb,"  Roger  Williams'  "George  Fox  Digged  out  of 
his  Burrowes,"  and  Cotton  Mather's  enormous  product  of 
four  hundred  treatises,  sermons,  pamphlets,  witchcraft 
arguments,  his  now  quite  absurd  "Remarkable  Providences" 
and  his  encyclopedic  "Magnalla."  The  great  "Complete 
Body  of  Divinity,"  of  Vice-President  Wlllard  of  Harvard, 
expounding  the  stern  Calvinism  of  the  latter  17th  Century, 
was  the  most  pretentious  and  Important  of  these.  In  addi- 
tion, countless  "Election  Sermons,"  tracts,  "Execution  Ser- 

1  This  was  also  largely  true  of  the  England  of  the  early  18th  Century. 
Locke,  for  instance,  was  not  a  factor  in  English  university  education  until 
some  time  later. 


The  Connecticut  Colony  in  1 701 -17 14        267 

mons"  (In  which  the  condemned  was  rhetorically  flayed  as 
he  awaited  the  rope),  and  controversial  pamphlets,  such  as 
filled  the  air  when  the  "Half-way  Covenant"  argument  was 
on,  many  of  them  printed  in  New  England,  formed  the 
staple  intellectual  pabulum  of  the  educated  class.  The 
lists  of  books  in  New  England  private  libraries  of  that 
day  show  to  what  an  extent  this  sort  of  theological  publica- 
tion comprised  the  reading  of  the  time.  To  these 
were  added  similar  works  from  England,  till  we  seem  to  see 
.nothing  but  theology  read  about  the  hearth-fires  of  these 
early  Colony  leaders.  John  Dunton,  in  1686,  had  enthusias- 
tically imported  a  lot  of  English  books  that  he  expected  to 
turn  a  penny  on,  but  says  that  he  and  his  books  were  about 
as  popular  in  Boston  as  "Sour  ale  In  Summer."  There  were 
plenty  of  booksellers  in  Boston,  and  most  of  them  became 
rich,  and  all  were  dandles.  But  their  sales  were  to  the 
ministers  mostly,  and  of  theological  works. 

Inventories  of  the  time  show  the  small  range  of  books  In 
Connecticut  libraries.  I  came  across  such  a  list  in  the 
Inventory  of  a  Milford  estate  in  the  New  Haven  probate 
records  of  1700.  The  usual  household  belongings  are 
given — "cubbards,"  state  tables,  a  looking-glass,  a  "great 
looking  glass,"  "one  negro  girl,  £30,"  etc. — and  then  comes 
a  catalogue  of  "som  books,"  mostly  folios.  Here  were 
listed  "Fox  acts  &  monuments,  Perkins  his  works,  Cooper's 
Dictionary,  Fox  Martyrs  2  vols.,  Gonerall  History  of 
Turks,  Doctrine  of  ye  Gospels,  CIceros  works  In  Latine, 
Scapula's  Lexicon  in  Greek  &  Latine,  Christian's  Dialogue, 
Wilson's  Smaller  Christian  Dictionary,  BundanI  Questions, 
Prim  about  perseverence,  Baxter's  Confession  of  his  Faith, 
Majors  Physlologia,  Coles  English  Dictionary,  Compleat 
Horsman  or  exact  Farior,  Sibbs  soul  Conflict,  appologle  of 
ye  Church  of  England,  the  logician's  Schoolmaster,  Eplt- 
omle   of  ye   art   of  husbandry,   beames   of   former  light. 


268  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

Infant  Baptisme,  a  Latine  bible,  a  brief  instructions  ye  wor- 
ship of  God,  Calipoia,  ye  whole  book  spalms,  ye  portrai- 
ture of  Charles  ist,  Catalines  conspiracy,  Burrough  of  a 
gracious  spiritt,"  and  an  "antidote  against  distractions." 
Richard  Rosewell,  the  Collegiate  School  treasurer  previous 
to  John  Ailing,  left  a  "Dixonary,  history  book,"  and  "i 
small  book,"  One  Thomas  Cooke  of  Guilford,  dying  in 
1700,  left  "a  book  cald  ye  exposition  of  ye  10  command- 
ments, the  practical  Catechisme,  ye  10  virgins,  a  Book 
titled  Faith  &  good  Works  all,  a  parchment  called  ye  Church 
history,  ye  Estate  of  Britain,  an  old  psalm  book  a  book  of 
Sam.  Willards,  a  book  titled  a  good  conscience,  an  old  book 
called  ye  passion  of  Christ,  ye  assembly  of  divines,  a  book 
Sion  in  distress  a  book  of  Sr  William  Phlpps,  a  book  of 
Thomas  Taylors  a  Latton  Book  in  ox,  a  paper  covered  book 
titled  dead  Faith,  a  Boza  bible  [John  Boyse's  Translation 
of  The  Apocrypha?]  and  2  old  bibles." 

There  was,  to  be  sure,  some  crudely  imaginative  litera- 
ture written  during  this  period,  though  I  fancy  that  most 
of  It  had  scant  audiences.  But  this  was  faintly  poetical,  at 
the  best,  and  was  deeply  tinctured  with  the  prevailing  fear 
of  God  and  hope  of  a  very  tangible  Hereafter.  And  It  took 
the  form  of  metrical  elegies  and  epitaphs,  of  "two-penny 
jeering  gigges,"  or  acrostics,  as  often  as  it  did  of  more  sus- 
tained flights  of  poetry.     Isaac  Watts'  lines. 

Gentle  Ithuriel  led  him  round  the  skies; 

The  buildings  struck  him  with  immense  surprise, 

are  not  more  ridiculous  to  modern  readers  than  the  amazing 
mass  of  theological  verse  that  came  out  of  contemporaneous 
New  England.  Considering  that  they  might  proceed  so  far 
in  their  reforming  of  the  Church  of  England  ritual  as  to 
sing  psalms,  the  first  book  Issued  in  New  England  had  been 
the  "Bay  Psalm  Book,"  printed  on  the  Harvard  press  by 


The  Connecticut  Colony  in  1701-1714        269 

Stephen  Da^e,  a  ne'er-do-well  fellow,  who  fell  into  evil  ways 
and  was  clapped  in  jail.  This  badly  printed  collection  of 
religious  doggerel,  with  amended  versions,  went  through 
thirty  editions.     Containing  such  lines  as 

O  Pfeppie  hee  shall  surely  bee 

that  taketh  up,  that  eke 
thy  little  ones  against  the  stones 

doth  into  pieces  break, 

this  extraordinary  set  of  Meeting-house  songs,  together  with 
Sternhold  and  Hopkins  rendering,  furnished  the  New  Eng- 
land congregations,  as,  indeed.  New  England  households, 
with  their  religious  verse  far  past  the  date  of  the  founding 
of  the  Collegiate  School,  and  no  doubt  was  used  by  the 
scholars. 

Timothy  Woodbridge  probably  considered  that  he  was 
assisting  in  the  moral  return  of  Connecticut,  at  least  to  the 
clam  banks  of  the  original  Puritan  simplicity.  But  his 
poetry  does  not  commend  his  imaginative  genius  very  much 
to  us.  This  Collegiate  School  Trustee,  however,  never 
sank  to  quite  the  abysmal  depths  of  nonsense  that  Governor 
Wolcott  of  Connecticut  fell  into  in  his  fifteen  hundred  lines 
commemorating  his  predecessor's  securing  of  the  Colony 
charter: 

Religion  was  the  cause ;  Divinity 
Having  declar'd  the  gospel  shine  should  be 
Extensive  as  the  sun's  diurnal  shine; 
This  mov'd  our  Founders  to  this  great  design. 

But  the  particular  star  in  New  England's  early  poetry 
was  Michael  Wigglesworth  who,  as  we  have  seen,  had 
escaped  an  early  death  in  New  Haven,  to  become  the  poeti- 
cal exponent  of  all  the  gloom  and  despair  and  agonized 
spiritual  torments  of  his  times. 


270  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

Wigglesworth  was  known,  of  course,  to  the  Collegiate 
School  founders,  as  were  doubtless  his  poems.  "Homely 
and  coarse  as  his  muse  is,"  said  a  critic  of  1829  of  his  verses, 
"her  voice  probably  sunk  into  the  hearts  of  those  who  lis- 
tened to  her  rude  melody,  leaving  there  an  impression, 
deeper  than  any  which  the  numbers  of  a  Byron,  a  Southey, 
or  a  Moore  may  ever  produce."  And  this  was  probably 
true.  The  ordinary  New  England  folk  of  the  early  i8th 
Century  were  no  nice  discriminators  in  matters  of  literary 
taste.  They  were  not  readers,  and  knew  little  or  nothing 
of  the  new  Queen  Anne  fashions  in  books  in  London.  They 
were  still  engrossed  by  the  theological  disputes  of  the  day  in 
their  own  narrow  circles,  and  the  best  of  them  were  spend- 
ing most  of  their  energy  in  finding  ways  of  stemming  the 
ebb  of  the  early  religious  tide  rather  than  in  cultivating  the 
graces  of  life.  To  them,  Michael  Wigglesworth's  lumber- 
ing miles  of  earnest  but  unconsciously  puerile  verses  were 
in  the  literary  field  what  the  sermons  and  tracts  on  their 
scant  bookshelves  were  to  them  in  the  matter  of  solid  think- 
ing. Wigglesworth's  "Day  of  Doom"  is  of  course  his  most 
noted  work. 

Wallowing  in  all   kinds  of  sin, 

Vile  wretches  lay  secure; 
The  best  of  men  had  scarcely  then 

Their  lamps  kept  in  good  ure. 

The  final  Judgment  Day  arrives.     The  Almighty  appears, 

With  mighty  voice,  and  hideous  noise. 
More  terrible  than  thunder, 

and  the  erstwhile  inhabitants  of  the  earth  are  called  before 
him  for  judgment.  Violent  arguments  begin  between  lost 
souls  and  God. 

"But  Lord,"  say  they,  "we  went  astray. 
And  did  more  wickedly. 


The  Connecticut  Colony  in  1701-1714        271 

By  means  of  those  whom  thou  hast  chose, 

Salvation  heirs  to  be." 
To  whom  the  judge,  "what  you  allege, 

Doth  nothing  help  the  case; 
But  makes  appear  how  vile  you  were, 

And  rendereth  you  more  base." 

The  damned  are  hastily  packed  off  to  their  eternal  torments, 
argument  or  no  argument,  doubtless  to  the  terror  of  fireside 
families  to  whom  the  heads  of  households  rolled  forth  the 
awful  verses. 

Then  to  the  bar,  all  they  drew  near 

Who  died  in  infancy, 
And  never  had  or  good  or  bad 

Effected  personally. 
But  from  the  womb  unto  the  tomb. 

Were  straightway  carried,  .    .    . 

These  infants  propound  the  following  extenuating  circum- 
stances : 

"But  Adam's  guilt  our  souls  hath  spilt. 

His  fault  is  charged  on  us; 
And  that  alone  hath  overthrown. 

And  utterly  undone  us  .    .    . 
How  could  we  sin  that  had  not  been 

Or  how  is  his  sin  our 
Without  consent,  which  to  prevent. 

We  never  had  a  power?" 

Then  answered  the  judge  most  dread, 

"God  doth  such  doom  forbid. 
That  men  should  die  eternally 

For  what  they  never  did. 
But  what  you  call  old  Adam's  fall. 

And  only  his  trespass, 
You  call  amiss  to  call  it  his, 

Both  his  and  yours  it  was. 


272  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

He  was  design'd  of  all  mankind 

To  be  a  public  head, 
A  common  root,  whence  all  should  shoot. 

And  stood  in  all  their  stead. 
He  stood  and  fell,  did  ill  or  well, 
I  Not  for  himself  alone. 

But  for  you  all,  who  now  his  fall 

And  trespass  would  disown." 

Wigglesworth's  God  proceeds  in  this  vein  before  the  un- 
baptized  infants  for  numerous  stanzas,  and  concludes: 

"  A  crime  it  is,  therefore  in  bliss 
You  may  not  hope  to  dwell 
But  unto  you  I  shall  allow 

The  easiest  room  in  hell." 

It  must  have  been  a  heartening  ending  of  this  doleful  busi- 
ness, to  the  church  members  of  Abraham  Pierson's  day,  for 
Wigglesworth  to  wind  up  his  stupendous  mass  of  doggerel 
with  a  fascinating  picture  of  the  joyful  reception  in  Heaven 
of  the  "saints"  themselves,  church  members  in  good  stand- 
ing in  the  village  Meeting-house. 

Perhaps  we  can  have  no  worse  example,  however,  of  the 
poetical  genius  of  those  days  than  in  the  verses  of  Nicholas 
Noyes,  that  persistent  disciple  of  the  foppish  punning  style 
of  an  earlier  day  in  London.  Noyes'  poems  are  a  very  good 
example  of  the  sort  of  poetry  that  was  accepted  by  his 
New  England  contemporaries.  In  his  "Consolatory  Poem" 
to  Cotton  Mather,  for  whom  he  wrote  some  prefatory 
jingles  for  the  latter's  "Magnalia,"  the  Reverend  Noyes 
wrote : 

Yea,  who  would  live  among  catarrhs 
Contagion,  pains,  and  strifes,  and  wars. 
That  might  go  up  above  the  stars. 
And  live  in  health,  and  peace,  and  bliss. 
Had  in  that  world,  but  wish'd  in  this? 


The  Connecticut  Colony  in  1 701 -17 14        273 

This  sort  of  poetry  appears  to  have  been  about  the  best  that 
the  New  England  of  the  Collegiate  School's  early  days 
afforded. 

Ill 

In  science  we  find  the  contemporaries  of  the  Collegiate 
School  founders  steeped  in  the  supernatural,  and  untouched 
by  the  great  intellectual  awakening  in  England  that  had 
followed  Bacon  and  which  was  now  being  brilliantly  carried 
on  by  Sir  Isaac  Newton,  Loclce,  Halley,  and  Cotes.  It  was 
said  that  there  was  but  one  copy  of  Bacon's  "Advancement 
of  Learning"  in  all  New  England  a  decade  after  the  Col- 
legiate School  was  founded.  Rumors  of  a  new  field  of 
intellectual  life  had,  no  doubt,  filtered  into  the  colonies. 
But  to  the  orthodox  leaders  of  the  day  this  departure 
meant  only  the  threatening  advent  of  a  new  theology,  as  had 
so  well  been  proven  in  the  Latitudinarian  movement  in 
Boston.  As  such,  it  was  sternly  to  be  avoided.  So  that,  by 
1700,  as  little  was  known  of  Isaac  Newton  and  John  Locke, 
or  even  Bacon,  in  science,  as  was  known  of  Dryden  and 
Steele  and  Addison  in  literature.  If  the  metaphysics  that 
was  taught  at  the  Collegiate  School  was  to  be  of  the 
traditional  and  long  outgrown  scholastic  systems  of  the 
earlier  Reformation  writers,  and  if  the  theology  was 
the  strictest  and  most  primitive  Calvinism,  the  "Physicks" 
was  of  equal  antiquity  and  a  half-century  behind  more  en- 
lightened England's.  The  New  England  people  of  the 
early  i8th  Century  were  still  at  the  intellectual  stage  of  their 
Puritan  forefathers  of  the  early  17th  Century.  Rector 
Pierson's  classes  began  the  educational  history  of  Yale  in 
a  devout  belief  in  a  Calvinistic  hell,  in  supernatural  agencies, 
and  that  the  sun  moved  round  the  earth. 

Rector  Pierson's  manuscript  "Physicks"  would  doubtless 
give  us  a  highly  entertaining  view  of  the  scientific  notions  of 


274 


The  Beginnings  of  Yale 


his  times,  could  we  discover  a  copy  of  it.  But  we  have  an 
idea  of  what  it  was  like,  from  the  Harvard  text-book  of 
the  day,  a  manuscript  copy  of  which,  in  the  handwriting  of 
a  Harvard  student  of  1708,  was  found  a  few  years  ago 
under  an  ancient  flooring  In  Faneull  Hall  In  Boston.  Each 
paragraph  in  this  little  Harvard  text-book  defined  some 
natural  phenomenon.  It  concerned  "falling  stars"  and  why 
they  are  "inflamed;"  "airy  meteors;"  "Irregular  winds," 
the  dew.  Sleep  is  caused,  we  read,  by  "steames  of  food,  and 
blood  ascending  into  ye  Brain,  by  whose  coldness  they  are 
said  to  be  condens'd  Into  moisture,  which  obstructs  ye  pas- 
sage of  ye  Spirits  that  they  can't  freely  permeate  to  ye 
Organs  of  Senses";  dreams  are  "an  adjunct  of  Sleep," 
"which  in  ye  active  fancy's  entertaining  itself  (whilst  It  has 
nothing  else  to  do)  with  ye  Phantasms  laid  up  in  ye 
memory."     The  Harvard  "Physlcks"  of  1 703-1 707    (and 


The  Connecticut  Colony  in  1 701 -17 14        275 

no  doubt  Rector  Pierson's)  taught  that  animals  were  dis- 
tinguishable from  mankind  largely  through  their  lack  of 
reason,  "though  some  learned  men  are  enclined  to  think  that 
religion  not  reason  is  ye  essential  difference  between  man 
and  brute."  This  treatise  also  had  to  do  with  medicine, 
astronomy,  and  simple  measuring  (such  as  of  "ye  cask  both 
at  ye  bung'  head"),  and  "fortification." 

Rector  Pierson's  teachings  could  hardly  have  been  very 
different  from  those  in  this  old  Harvard  Latin  manuscript, 
as  indeed  both  probably  came  from  a  common  and  earlier 
Harvard  source,  and  in  turn  from  the  English  university 
teaching  of  1600. 

It  will  be  recalled  that  Noadiah  Russell,  of  the  board  of 
Trustees,  had  been  making  almanacs  in  old  Ipswich  but  a 
few  years  before  this  time.  His  opinions  on  the  phenomena 
of  nature  no  doubt  coincided  with  much  that  Abraham  Pier- 
son  was  now  teaching.  Some  of  them  are  worth  quoting. 
"Concerning  Lightning  and  Thunder"  this  Collegiate 
School  Trustee  had  written:  "Lightning  is  an  exalation  hot 
and  dry,  as  afso  hot  and  moist;  which  being  elevated  by  the 
sun  to  the  middle  region  of  the  air,  is  there  included  or  shut 
up  within  a  cloud  and  cannot  ascend;  but  by  an  antiperistasis 
grows  hotter  and  is  enkindled,  attenuated,  and  so  seeks  for 
more  room,  which  it  not  finding  in  the  cloud,  violently  rends 
the  same,  breaks  out  of  it  and  continues  burning  so  long  that 
it  comes  to  the  very  ground.  By  its  rending  the  cloud  there 
is  caused  a  most  dreadful  noise  or  rumbling,  and  this  we  call 
thunder.  So  that  thunder  is  improperly  reckoned  among 
the  kind  or  species  of  meteors."  And  Trustee  Russell  pro- 
ceeds: "With  this  lightning"  [a  "second  sort"  which  "con- 
sists of  a  more  fat  and  thick  exalation"]  "there  happens  to 
be  (yet  seldom)  a  stone,  that  is  called  a  thunderbolt,  which 
braketh  forth  with  the  exalation  (as  a  bullet  out  of  a  gun) 
and  breaks  into  pieces  whatever  it  meets.     When  it  strikes 


276  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

the  ground,  it  is  reported  to  go  not  above  five  feet  deep." 
Noadiah  Russell's  published  facts  about  lightning  contain 
even  more  curious  observations.  He  says :  "If  lightning  kills 
one  in  his  sleep,  he  dyes  with  his  eyes  opened.  The  reason 
is  because  It  just  wakes  him  and  kills  him  before  he  can  shut 
his  eyes  again.  If  it  kills  one  waking,  his  eyes  will  be  found 
to  be  shut,  because  it  so  amaseth  him,  that  he  winketh  and 
dyes  before  he  can  open  his  eyes  again.  Caution  [adds  this 
sponsor  for  the  intellectual  life  of  early  Yale].  It  is  not 
good  to  stand  looking  on  the  lightning  for  any  time,  for,  if 
it  hurts  no  other  way,  yet  it  may  dry  up  or  so  waste  the 
chrystalline  humor  of  the  eyes  that  it  may  cause  the  sight 
to  perish,  or  it  may  swell  the  face,  making  it  to  break  out 
with  scabs,  caused  by  a  kind  of  poyson  in  the  exalation  which 
the  pores  of  the  face  and  eyes  do  admit." 

It  was  under  such  educational  auspices,  and  at  such  a 
stage  in  Connecticut's  intellectual  progress,  that  the  Colle- 
giate School  of  Pierpont  and  Pierson,  of  Andrew  and  Buck- 
ingham and  Woodbridge  and  Sir  Joseph  Noyes,  Tutor,  was 
now  developing.  As  we  shall  see,  circumstances,  a  few 
years  later,  were  to  bring  a  new  mental  stimulus  to  this  pro- 
vincialism, and  happily  introduce  at  least  a  little  of  the 
broader  intellectual  life  of  England  to  the  struggling 
academy.  But  for  the  first  decade  and  more  of  the  Colle- 
giate School's  career,  it  continued  to  give  the  orthodox 
education  of  the  times,  untouched  by  what  was  going  on  in 
the  outside  English-speaking  world,  and  remote  from  its 
cultural  influence. 


wvernor. 
jurcfon  ^ 
Sa/fonsfafO 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  SAYBROOK  PLATFORM 

I 

I  E  have  seen  how  in  the  last  years  of 
the  17th  Century,  the  majority  senti- 
ment among  the  ministers  of  the 
Colony  had  slowly  been  forming  in 
favor  of  a  stronger  church  consolida- 
tion than  had  been  the  independent 
Congregational  tradition  to  that  time, 
U  so  as  to  stem  the  rising  tide  of  irre- 
ligion.  We  have  seen  how  this  had  led  to  agitation  for  that 
proposed  church  control  of  the  Collegiate  School  which  had 
been  advised  by  the  Mathers.  And  we  have  seen  how  the 
Pierpont  party  had  rather  adroitly  evaded  that  possibility, 
how  they  had  changed  the  sections  of  the  Addington  and 
Sewall  charter  draft  that  tended  in  that  direction,  and  how 
they  had  secured  a  charter  which,  until  1792  (when  the 
State  secured  representation  on  the  Board  of  Trustees  in 


278  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

return  for  a  grant  of  money),  was  to  make  the  Connecticut 
college  independent  either  of  the  church  or  state. 

But  I  do  not  suppose  that  we  should  conclude  from  this 
last-mentioned  fact  that  the  Pierpont  party  were  averse  to 
a  better  organization  of  the  churches.  Abraham  Pierson 
was  avowedly  of  Presbyterian  leanings,  and  James  Noyes 
(like  his  father)  was  a  moderate  Presbyterian.  The  Fair- 
field County  ministers  likewise  leaned  that  way.  That 
James  Pierpont  was  prepared  for  a  step  forward  in  the 
churches  is  likely,  though  he  had  been  opposed  to  forming 
such  an  organization  in  connection  with  the  Collegiate 
School.  Saltonstall,  I  imagine,  and  Woodbridge  had  wished 
to  see  that  School  begun  under  organized  church  auspices. 
But  this  had  not  been  done.  Now,  however,  that  the  School 
had  been  established  as  an  independent  institution,  there 
was  left  to  be  undertaken  the  effort  to  bring  it  and  the 
Colony  churches  into  a  working  relation  with  each  other. 
Such  a  scheme  had  been  under  discussion  by  the  Massachu- 
setts conservatives,  as  a  last  despairing  effort  to  stem  the 
tide  of  the  new  theology.  It  was  now,  in  1 703-1 705, 
broached  in  Connecticut. 

The  Trustees,  meeting  in  March  of  the  former  year  at 
East  Guilford  (now  Madison),  prepared  a  petition  to  their 
fellow  Connecticut  ministers  calling  attention  to  the  Con- 
fession of  Faith  which  had  been  adopted  in  1680  by  the 
New  England  Synod  meeting  at  Boston,  and  suggesting  that 
Connecticut  concur  with  Massachusetts  by  asking  their 
own  General  Assembly  officially  to  recommend  it  to  the 
Connecticut  Colony  churches.  Timothy  Woodbridge  made 
his  first  appearance  as  a  Trustee  at  this  meeting,  having 
finally  left  Boston.  Whether  his  appearance,  fresh  from  a 
year's  sojourn  near  the  Mathers  in  Boston,  had  anything 
to  do  with  the  action  taken  we  do  not  know,  but  it  certainly 
was  agreeable  to  him.     The  Savoy  Confession  approved 


The  Saybrook  Platform  279 

by  the  Boston  Synod  had  not  been  unanimously  adopted 
throughout  the  Colony,  so  that  the  purpose  of  this  action 
was  to  secure  an  orthodox  creed  for  the  Connecticut 
churches.  And  I  suppose  that  it  had  another  purpose  also. 
Church  of  England  parishes  had  for  some  years  been  estab- 
lished in  Boston,  where  they  were  received  with  coldness  by 
the  conservative  Congregationalists  and  cordiality  by  the 
new  Brattle-Coleman  party.  An  Episcopal  Church  had, 
indeed,  been  sought  in  Stratford  in  1690.  But  Episcopacy 
had  not  as  yet  made  progress  in  Connecticut.  In  1701, 
however,  the  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel  in 
Foreign  Parts  had  been  chartered  in  London,  and  mission- 
aries of  the  Church  of  England  had  been  sent  to  New  Eng- 
land. One  of  those,  George  Keith,  had  passed  through 
Connecticut  and  had  been  "civally  entertained"  by  the  broad- 
minded  Gurdon  Saltonstall,  who  not  only  permitted  the 
missionary  to  preach  in  his  Puritan  pulpit  but  expressed  to 
him  "his  good  affection  to  the  Church  of  England."  The 
growth  of  Episcopacy  in  Connecticut  now  began,  and  I 
imagine  that  its  threat  of  coming  inroads  upon  the  Con- 
gregational churches  may  have  had  no  small  part  in  sug- 
gesting to  the  Collegiate  School  (as  a  similar  situation  had 
suggested  a  similar  effort  at  Harvard)  that  Connecticut 
Congregationalism  put  itself  in  readiness  to  combat  it,  at 
least  so  far  as  adopting  a  Colony  Congregational  creed 
was  concerned.  It  appears  that  this  movement  met  with 
good  success  and  that  "the  churches  and  ministers  of  the 
several  counties  met  in  a  consociated  council,  and  gave  their 
assent  to  the  Westminster  and  Savoy  Confessions  of  Faith.' 
It  seems  [adds  Connecticut's  historian  Trumbull]  that  at 
this  council  they  also  drew  up  certain  rules  of  ecclesiastical 
union  in  discipline,  as  preparatory  to  a  general  synod,  which 
they  still  had  in  contemplation." 

However  this  may  have  been,  nothing  resulted  from  this 


28o  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

last-mentioned  proposal  until  five  years  later.  The  Rev. 
Gurdon  Saltonstall  of  New  London  then  appears  on  that 
public  stage  where  for  the  next  seventeen  years  he  was  to  be 
so  important  a  figure. 

Contemporary  references  go  to  show  that  Saltonstall  was 
probably  the  most  celebrated  preacher  of  his  day,  as  he 
certainly  was  one  of  the  most  versatile.  On  his  death,  in  his 
seventeenth  year  as  Governor  of  Connecticut,  he  was  re- 
ferred to  in  the  Boston  paper  as  "a  profound  Divine,  a 
Great  Judge  in  the  Law,  and  a  consummate  statesman;  He 
had  made  Excellent  observations  in  Natural  Philosophy, 
and  had  a  peculiar  Genius  and  Skill  in  the  Mathematics; 
Not  to  mention  his  lighter  Studies  of  Philology,  History, 
Geography,  &c.,  in  each  of  which  he  excell'd  enough,  to  have 
made  an  other  Man,  very  Famous:  His  Person,  Mien  and 
Aspect  were  equally  attractive  of  Love,  Esteem  and  Admira- 
tion." As  a  public  speaker,  Gurdon  Saltonstall  received 
from  his  contemporaries  the  highest  praise  of  any  of  his 
colleagues.  He  "charmed"  his  hearers,  it  was  said  of  him, 
"in  such  a  Strange  and  Wonderfull  manner,  that  when  he 
has  sometimes  spoken  for  Hours  together,  there  has 
appeared  nothing  but  Satisfaction,  Delight  and  Rapture,  till 
they  have  all  complain'd,  that  he  Left  off,  &  Robb'd  them 
of  their  Happiness  too  soon."  Saltonstall,  with  these 
unusual  intellectual  attainments,  was  "very  much  Fixt,  in 
the  Establish'd  Religion,  of  New-England,  after  a  long, 
strict  and  critical  Enquiry,  into  the  Principles  of  it."  Cotton 
Mather's  encomiums  in  Saltonstall's  case  were  even  more 
highly  colored  than  usual,  but  they  give  us  a  glimpse  of  the 
man  himself.  He  had,  said  Mather,  "an  Agreeable  Aspect: 
The  Silver  Basket  of  a  comely  Body,  carrying  in  it  the 
Golden  Apples  of  a  well-furnished  and  well-disposed  Soul; 
And  a  venerable  Presence  charming  with  Familiar  Con- 
descensions.   We  will  not  call  him  a  Star  [concludes  Cotton 


The  Saybrook  Platform  281 

Mather,  soaring  upwards  from  his  customary  rhetorical 
heights]  but  even  a  Constellation  of  the  most  fulgid 
Endowments." 

During  the  last  years  of  his  Governorship,  Fitz-John 
Winthrop  had  been  more  or  less  incapacitated,  and  had 
turned  over  to  his  young  minister  much  of  the  Colony's  busi- 
ness, especially,  it  was  said,  his  official  correspondence, 
though  he  doubtless  continued  his  epistles  on  fashion  him- 
self. His  death,  in  November,  1707,  left  the  Colony  in  a 
difficult  situation.  Serious  troubles  over  the  Rhode  Island 
and  Massachusetts  boundaries  were  still  unsettled.  Gov- 
ernor Dudley  of  the  latter  Colony  had  for  several  years 
been  attempting  to  get  control  of  Connecticut,  and  had  re- 
peatedly attacked  its  charter  before  the  Attorney  Generals 
of  both  King  William  and  Queen  Anne.  A  suit  was  now 
pending  on  the  last  of  these  charges.  The  French  and  Indian 
War  was  rising  on  the  horizon.  In  all  of  these  matters 
Saltonstall  had  been  a  close  adviser  of  Governor  Winthrop, 
and,  it  was  said,  was  the  only  man  in  the  Colony  who  knew 
the  standing  of  the  suit  brought  by  Dudley,  having,  in  fact, 
written  the  Connecticut  brief  in  reply  to  it.  Under  these 
circumstances,  he  was  judged  to  be  the  most  capable  suc- 
cessor to  Winthrop  who  could  be  found.  A  month  after 
Winthrop's  death,  therefore,  the  Assembly,  meeting  in 
special  session,  repealed  a  law  that  the  Governor  must  be 
elected  from  the  Magistrates,  and  chose  the  New  London 
minister  Saltonstall,  his  election  being  ratified  by  the  free- 
men the  following  May. 

Almost  the  first  official  act  of  Governor  Saltonstall  was 
to  bring  before  the  Assembly  a  document  calling  for  a  synod 
of  the  Colony  churches  to  arrange  for  an  ecclesiastical 
establishment. 

Now  this  action  of  Saltonstall's  was  a  serious  step  to  take. 
The    similar    effort    in    Massachusetts    had    ignominiously 


282  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

failed,  and  this  new  suggestion  was  especially  serious  because 
of  the  form  which  Saltonstall  originally  gave  to  it.  In  this  he 
had  proposed  by  legislative  enactment  to  command  the 
ministers  to  meet  and  draw  up  a  form  of  church  discipline, 
which  then  might  be  imposed  upon  the  Colony  churches  by 
the  Assembly.  This  meddling  by  the  Assembly  in  church 
affairs  had  long  been  a  sore  point  in  Connecticut  church  his- 
tory. The  more  moderate  Presbyterians  of  the  Colony 
(among  whom  Pierpont  seems  to  have  taken  the  lead), 
together  with  the  laymen  in  the  Assembly  who  wished  the 
churches  to  retain  their  independence,  were  stoutly  opposed 
to  it.  There  was  a  sharp  collision  between  the  two  parties. 
The  Deputies  succeeded  in  altering  the  first  draft  so  that  the 
final  Act,  as  passed,  called  for  county  ministers'  meetings 
indeed,  but  with  "messengers"  to  be  present  chosen  by  the 
laity,  and  permitted  these  conventions  to  elect  delegates  as 
they  saw  fit, — two  or  more  to  a  county, — to  a  Colony  synod 
to  be  held  at  Saybrook  at  the  next  Collegiate  School 
Commencement. 

This  action  suggests  a  significant  factor  in  the  whole 
Saybrook  Platform  episode.  Though  it  did  not  succeed, 
here  again  was  an  effort  to  secure  governmental  authority 
over  the  churches,  with  its  resulting  threat  of  governmental 
control  over  the  acts  of  the  Collegiate  School.  While  the 
episode  shows  Governor  Saltonstall  as  a  firm  believer  in  a 
centralized  Colony  authority  over  the  religious  state  of  the 
people,  it  likewise  shows  Pierpont  again  as  the  one  who 
proposed  to  keep  the  two  apart,  and  to  rescue  the  struggling 
academy  of  which  he  had  been  the  original  promoter  from 
state  oi'  even  church  control. 

II 

This  is  not  the  place  to  give  more  than  a  brief  review  of 
the  Saybrook  Synod  and  its  famous  platform,  and  note  its 


The  Saybrook  Platform 


283 


Sfovernor 

O  alfonsfafis 

'••  chair  ■  ••• 


connection  with  the  affairs  of  the  Collegiate  School.  This, 
of  course,  was  considerable.  I  presume  that  James  Pier- 
pont,  who  assumed  the  lead  at  this  synod,  was  in  sympathy 
with  it.  But  that  he  did  not  go  as  far  as  did  Governor  Sal- 
tonstall  is  entirely  substantiated  by  the  traditions  of  the  meet- 
ing. Pierpont  was  undoubtedly  looking  out  for  his  infant 
Collegiate  School  as  much  as  he  was  for  the  state  of  religion 
in  the  Colony;  he  was,  therefore,  interested  in  securing  a 
Colony  creed  for  both  church  and  school  rather  than  in  a 
Presbyterian  organization  of  the  churches.^ 

It  was  on  the  eighth  of  September,  1708,  that  the  seventh 
annual  Collegiate  School  Commencement  was  held  at  the 
Saybrook  Meeting-house.  The  Synod  convened  the  day 
following.  Tradition  has  it  that  this  meeting,  famous  in 
Connecticut  history,  was  held  in  the  large  lower  room  of  the 
Lynde  house,  which  the  day  before  had  finally  come  into  the 

1  Standard  studies  of  these  may  be  found  in  Dr.  Leonard  Bacon's  long 
and  minute  account  in  his  "Contributions  to  the  Ecclesiastical  History  of 
Connecticut,"  published  in  1861,  and  in  his  chapter  on  Pierpont  in  his 
"Thirteen  Historical  Discourses."  Trumbull's  History  also  contains  an 
exhaustive  statement,  and  Professor  Williston  Walker  has  treated  it  at 
length  in  his  "Creeds  and  Platforms  of  Congregationalism." 


284  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

formal  possession  of  the  School.  There  was  probably  a 
small  attendance,  though  the  interest  in  the  proposed  Plat- 
form may  have  brought  a  larger  assembly  of  ministers  and 
laymen  than  usually  attended  the  Commencements.  As  it 
happened,  nine  of  the  twelve  Trustees  of  the  Collegiate 
School  had  been  elected  delegates  to  this  meeting:  James 
Noyes  of  Stonington,  Thomas  Buckingham  of  Saybrook, 
Moses  Noyes  of  Lyme,  Samuel  Andrew  of  Milford  (then, 
of  course,  Rector  in  title  of  the  School),  Timothy  Wood- 
bridge  of  Hartford,  Samuel  Russel  of  Branford,  little 
Noadiah  Russell  of  Middletown,  John  Davenport  of  Stam- 
ford, and  James  Pierpont  of  New  Haven.  New  Haven 
County  alone  sent  no  laymen  "messengers."  The  Say- 
brook  Synod,  therefore,  was  practically  the  Board  of  Trus- 
tees of  the  Collegiate  School. 

The  business  of  this  famous  Synod  was  threefold:  the 
adoption  of  a  Confession  of  Faith  and  of  a  form  of  church 
government,  and  rules  for  the  latter.  The  Synod  seems  to 
have  come  down  at  once  to  a  test  of  strength  between  two 
extremes;  the  one,  represented  by  Pierpont,  taking  it  for 
granted  that  the  churches  already  had  a  Confession  and 
needed  now  only  the  public  announcement  of  it  by  the 
Assembly  and  some  loose  form  of  church  association;  the 
other,  representing  the  Saltonstall  party,  that  the  Synod 
should  send  a  Confession  and  organization  plan  to  the 
Assembly,  which  should  then  impose  it  upon  the  churches. 
Tradition  has  it  that  the  first  draft  was  drawn  up  by  James 
Pierpont,  but  that  it  was  far  from  the  extreme  views  of  the 
agitators  for  a  change,  and  a  most  conservative  document. 
The  upshot  of  the  discussion  was  a  compromise.  Pierpont's 
original  draft  was  so  amended  and  changed  that  it  gave 
some  appearance  of  following  the  more  radical  views.  Yet, 
as  passed,  it  left  the  Assembly  only  the  business  of  "public 
testimony  thereunto   as  the   faith  of  the  churches  of  this 


The  Saybrook  Platform  285 

Colony,"  and  framed  an  organization  which,  for  years 
afterwards,  was  to  be  interpreted  by  the  various  church 
associations  as  they  saw  fit.  The  several  counties  (which 
were  to  have  distinct  "consociations,"  all  four  being  repre- 
sented in  a  "General  Association"  by  ministerial  delegates) 
came  to  differ  very  greatly  from  each  other  in  the  practical 
application  of  it.^ 

The  important  result  to  the  Collegiate  School  of  the  Say- 
brook  Synod  of  1708  was  that  after  the  year  1722  (and  the 
custom  extended  far  into  the  i8th  Century)  every  officer  of 
the  Collegiate  School  and  of  Yale  College  was  under  the 
necessity  of  publicly  accepting  the  Confession  of  Faith 
adopted  at  it,  and  that  that  stern  Calvinistic  faith  thus  be- 
came the  officially  adopted  creed  of  the  School  and  was 
strictly  taught  to  its  scholars. 

The  Saybrook  Platform  of  1708  was  the  final  act  in  the 
long  effort  to  establish  Puritanism  in  Connecticut.  And  it 
was  a  successful  one.  The  Assembly,  to  be  sure,  adopted  an 
act  of  toleration  in  its  October  session  at  New  Haven  imme- 
diately following,  as  it  now  could  well  afford  to.  Under 
that  Act  dissenters  from  the  now  standardized  Congrega- 
tional church  were  permitted  to  enjoy  a  similar  religious 
liberty  to  that  granted  by  William  and  Mary  to  dissenters 
from  the  Church  of  England,  though  they  still  were  taxed 
to  help  support  the  Colony  church.  But  the  Saybrook 
Platform  squarely  set  Connecticut  and  the  coming  Yale  Col- 
lege back  into  the  traditional  mould.  Changed  as  it  was  and 
modified  from  the  primitive  religion  of  John  Davenport  and 
Thomas  Hooker,  the  accepted  religious  faith  and  theology 

1  Hartford  and  New  London  Counties  accepted  the  Saybrook  Platform  as 
it  was  passed,  Fairfield  took  a  more  extreme  Presbyterian  interpretation 
of  it,  and  New  Haven  appears  to  have  taken  a  middle  way.  The  Saybrook 
Platform  remained  in  force  until  1784,  and,  with  decreasing  strictness,  till 
1850,  or  thereabouts. 


286  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

of  Connecticut  people  was  henceforth,  for  generations,  to 
remain  in  the  traditional  lines.  While  Massachusetts  and 
Harvard  were  tending  In  the  opposite  direction,  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  Collegiate  School  and  now  the  adoption  of 
the  Saybrook  Platform  undoubtedly  made  Connecticut  con- 
servative and,  In  time,  were  to  have  a  retarding  effect  upon 
the  intellectual  broadening  of  her  people.  The  "Great 
Awakening"  of  Jonathan  Edwards'  day,  and  the  still  later 
popular  modification  of  Edwards'  stern  Calvinism  by  the 
first  Timothy  Dwight,  as  well  as  the  "New  England  Theol- 
ogy" of  the  early  19th  Century,  all  went  back,  for  their 
source,  to  the  Congregationalism  of  the  Saybrook  Platform. 

Ill 

Thus  much  It  is  necessary  to  recall  of  the  church  history 
of  these  early  i8th  Century  days  In  order  to  understand 
the  solidly  orthodox  ground  upon  which  the  Collegiate 
School  was  now  founded.  Protected  by  these  theological 
fortifications  against  the  Insidious  attacks  of  the  prevalent 
heresies  of  the  day,  and  domiciled  at  Saybrook,  the  Trustees 
of  that  School  no  doubt  considered  that  the  close  of  the  first 
decade  of  the  little  academy  found  matters  in  a  satisfactory 
condition  so  far  as  orthodoxy  went,  and  that  It  could  now 
develop  Into  the  Institution  it  had  been  planned  to  be. 

By  171 2,  however,  a  new  combination  of  unexpected  cir- 
cumstances was  to  arise  which  was  to  upset  these  hopeful 
expectations  and  all  but  wreck  the  Infant  academy.  These 
grew  out  of  the  traditional  trouble  which  Connecticut  had 
had  in  educational  matters, — the  financial  difficulties  of  the 
Connecticut  people,  and  the  poverty-stricken  treasury  of 
the  Collegiate  School  Itself. 

I  have  told  how  the  Assembly  had  encouraged  the 
School  by  appropriating  a  small  annual  sum  to  It.    This  had 


The  Saybrook  Platform 


287 


Saffonstafts 

Connecticut 

/-(^pj^  in 
Sosfon  in  IJIO 


been  used  to  pay  most  of  the  Rector's  salary,  leaving  the 
Tutors  to  be  paid  largely  from  the  tuition  of  the  lower 
classes.  As  at  Harvard,  this  tuition  was  payable  in  "country 
pay,"  the  common  legal  tender  of  the  times,  consisting  of 
farm  products  and  firewood,  occasional  live  stock,  and 
country-store  merchandise.  But  the  total  income  of  the 
School  from  all  sources  was  limited  enough.  While 
Treasurer  Ailing  had  the  deeds  to  the  Killingly  acres  of 
Major  Fitch,  and,  supposedly,  to  some  acres  near  Saybrook, 
we  do  not  hear  anything  about  an  income  from  these  sources. 
Established  on  an  independent  basis,  it  is  probable  that  the 
founders  at  first  had  expected  to  secure  financial  help  from 
individuals  in  the  Colony.  Two  years  after  the  founding, 
in  fact,  this  was  attempted.  The  Trustees  had  asked  the 
Assembly  for  permission  to  circulate  a  "brief"  throughout 
the  Colony  for  private  subscriptions.  But,  though  this  per- 
mission was  cheerfully  given,  nothing  appears  to  have  come 


288  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

from  it.  The  French  and  Indian  War  was  then  at  its 
hottest,  and  doubtless  the  Connecticut  folk  had  all  that  they 
could  manage  in  meeting  their  share  of  the  resulting  taxes 
and  levies  for  military  costs  and  men.  Governor  Salton- 
stall,  in  1 710,  had  gone  to  Boston  with  three  hundred  Con- 
necticut soldiers,  whose  support  was  a  public  problem.  So 
that  by  17 12  the  financial  condition  of  the  School  was  at  a 
low  ebb,  and  the  Trustees  were  forced  to  appeal  to  the 
Colony  treasury  for  aid.  The  Assembly,  considering  this 
appeal  and  the  general  educational  situation,  at  their  session 
in  the  New  Haven  Meeting-house  in  October  of  that  year, 
rose  to  the  occasion  by  passing  a  general  Act  for  "the  en- 
couragement of  learning,"  carrying  an  appropriation  for 
one  year  of  £100  to  the  Collegiate  School  "for  maintaining 
a  Rector  and  tutors,"  instead  of  the  £120  in  "country  pay" 
"formerly  granted." 

But  even  this  Colony  aid  did  not  help  matters.  The 
School  was  rapidly  weakening.  There  were  but  two  Seniors 
in  17 1 2,  and  three  Juniors.  The  outlook  was  bad  enough 
for  Rector  Andrew  In  Mllford  and  his  sole  resident  Tutor 
at  Saybrook,  Sir  Noyes.  An  appeal  was  made  to  the 
Assembly  to  remit  taxes  for  the  Collegiate  School  scholars, 
and  to  relieve  them  from  military  duty,  and  this  was  passed. 
The  Immediate  result  seems  to  have  been  a  sudden  Increase 
to  nine  in  the  Freshman  Class  of  17 14,  though  the  two  suc- 
ceeding classes  fell  off  again  to  three  youths  each. 

It  was  at  this  low  pass  that  the  leaders  of  the  School  put 
their  heads  together  and  began  to  look  about  them  for  out- 
side help. 


^(leremiah  ^^^^g/-] 


CHAPTER  V 


THE  GIFTS  OF  BOOKS 


P  to  this  time  the  Connecticut  political 
leaders,  so  far  as  England  was  con- 
cerned, had  been  fully  occupied  in  de- 
fending their  charter  rights  against 
their  neighbors,  and  had  just  managed 
to  slip  by  the  numerous  obstacles  set  up 
by  the  jealous  Dudley  of  Boston  and 
^^^^  the  New  York  Royal  Governors. 
Under  these  circumstances,  anything  like  official  efforts 
to  interest  English  leaders  in  Connecticut  matters  had  not 
been  feasible.  So  far  as  the  Collegiate  School  was  con- 
cerned, the  long  train  of  public  events  in  the  Colony,  begin- 
ning with  the  setting  up  of  the  original  independent  repub- 
lics, had  had  its  logical  outcome.    The  Connecticut  Assembly 


290  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

had  hesitated  about  incurring  Royal  wrath  by  independently 
"founding"  a  college,  and  the  School  itself  had  begun  its 
own  existence  under  the  most  quiet  public  circumstances 
possible.  But  now  James  Pierpont,  taking  upon  his  shoul- 
ders the  fast-slipping  fortunes  of  the  Collegiate  School, 
broke  the  long  tradition  of  aloofness  from  England,  by 
writing  in  the  Collegiate  School's  behalf  to  the  Massachu- 
setts Colony  Agent  in  London,  one  Jeremiah  Dummer. 

This  was  in  171 1.  Dummer  was  then  eleven  years  out 
of  Harvard,  and  a  resident  of  London.  His  personal 
address  was  so  good  and  his  manners  so  engaging  that  he 
had  become  a  man  of  some  social  prominence  in  the  London 
society  of  the  day.  As  the  friend  and  social  protege  of  that 
Lord  Bolingbroke  who  was  Secretary  of  State  under  William 
and  Mary,  he  became  acquainted  with  all  of  the  bigwigs  of 
London  literary  and  political  society,  and,  even  after  his 
noble  patron  had  been  impeached  and  deprived  of  his  title, 
was  hail-fellow-well-met  with  most  of  them,  and  apparently 
used  this  connection  to  the  advantage  of  his  distant  home 
Province  of  Massachusetts. 

It  was  to  this  fashionable  young  Colonial  agent  that,  as 
we  have  seen,  James  Pierpont  had  written  regarding  his 
family  connection  with  the  English  Plerreponts.  He  had, 
moreover,  In  that  letter,  Incidentally  asked  Dummer  to  see 
what  he  could  do  for  the  struggling  Collegiate  School.  The 
correspondence,  thus  Inaugurated,  was  to  bear  Important 
results.  Dummer's  reply  to  this  first  letter  from  the  New 
Haven  minister  Is  an  interesting  Yale  document.  He  had 
mentioned  Pierpont's  name  In  London,  telling  people  that 
he  was  "the  head  of  a  College," — no  doubt  thereby  causing 
the  momentary  raising  of  an  eyebrow  or  two  among  the 
coffee-house  fashionables  of  the  town,  as  to  what  outlandish 
Institution  had  been  started  In  that  Puritan  Province  by  the 
barbarous  name  of  "Connecticut."     And  he  had  set  about 


The  Gifts  of  Books  291 

with  his  usual  energy  to  buttonhole  his  wealthy  friends,  and 
see  what  he  could  do  for  it. 

It  had  so  happened  that  one  Elihu  Yale,  London  capitalist 
and  bigwig,  had  just  come  to  the  attention  of  James  Pier- 
pont  through  an  unusual  happening.  In  narrating  the  early 
days  in  Davenport's  New  Haven,  I  referred  to  the  family 
connection  between  Theophilus  Eaton  and  the  Denbighshire 
Yales.  It  will  be  recalled  that  Governor  Eaton  married  the 
widow  Yale,  who  brought  her  two  sons,  David  and  Thomas, 
and  daughter  Anne  (who  married  Edward  Hopkins)  with 
her  to  New  Haven  in  the  Davenport  party;  how  David 
Yale's  fairly  large  fortune  had  placed  him  on  the  first  tax- 
list  of  New  Haven,  and  how  he  had  early  left  the  sink- 
ing New  Haven  Colony  for  Boston,  where,  it  would  appear, 
Elihu  Yale  was  born,  probably  in  1649.  The  young  Elihu 
had  gone  back  to  London  with  his  father.  He  had  there 
been  put  to  school,  first  to  the  "Merchant  Tailor's"  and 
then  to  Milton's  friend's, — Master  Dugard's  in  Coleman 
Street  (under  the  shadow  of  Davenport's  old  church 
walls), — and,  on  reaching  his  maturity,  had  adventurously 
gone  out  with  the  East  India  Company  to  Madras,  where  he 
had  become  the  Company's  agent,  and  Governor  of  the 
English  trading  post,  Fort  St,  George.  Amassing,  by  more 
or  less  shady  means  it  would  appear,  a  large  fortune  for 
his  day  there,  he  had  returned  to  London  in  1699,  and  was 
now  living  in  Queen's  Square,  Great  Ormond  Street,  in  a 
highly  fashionable  style,  amid  the  magnificent  Oriental 
plunder  of  his  Madras  days.  By  17 10  Elihu  Yale, — then 
about  sixty-one  years  old, — was  looking  forward  to  the  end 
of  his  earthly  life  and  settling  his  affairs.  Childless,  he 
desired  a  legal  heir  to  his  great  estate,  and  was  casting  about 
him  for  one.  A  promising  candidate  appearing  in  the  fif- 
teen-year-old David  Yale,  son  of  the  great  man's  rural 
cousin,  Thomas,  who  had  remained  at  North  Haven,  Con- 


292 


The  Beginnings  of  Yale 


^ueen  mnne 

7.     ^ 


necticut,  Elihu  Yale  had  sent  for  him.  Pierpont  could 
hardly  escape  hearing  of  this.  Recognizing  in  Elihu  Yale 
a  logical  benefactor  of  the  struggling  Collegiate  School,  he 
mentions  the  possibility  to  Jeremiah  Dummer.  For 
Dummer's  letter  of  March  16,  171 1  (obviously  in  reply  to 
this  suggestion),  is  to  the  effect  that  "As  to  Mr.  Yale,  I 
doubt  I  can  do  anything  with  him  at  present,  he  being  very 
much  put  out  of  humour  on  the  account  of  his  losing  twenty 
thousand  pounds  by  Sir  Stephen  Evans,  who  lately  failed, 
and  thereunto  retiring  to  Sr  Caesar  Childs  in  the  Country 
hanged  himself  with  a  Bedcord." 

Two  months  later,  however,  in  spite  of  this  untoward 
occurrence,  Dummer  had  so  bestirred  himself  as  to  broach 
the  matter  with  Governor  Yale.  His  letter  to  Pierpont, 
May  22,  171 1,  is  to  this  effect:  "Here  [he  writes]  is  Mr. 
Yale,  formerly  Governor  of  Fort  St.  George  in  the  Indies, 


The  Gifts  of  Books  293 

who  has  got  a  prodigious  estate,  and  now  by  Mr.  Dixwell 
sends  for  a  relation  of  his  from  Connecticut  to  make  him  his 
heir,  having  no  son.  He  told  me  lately  [so  the  hustling 
Colony  agent  had  invaded  Great  Ormond  Street]  that 
he  intended  to  bestow  a  charity  upon  some  college  in  Oxford, 
under  certain  restrictions  which  he  mentioned.  But  I  think 
he  should  much  rather  do  it  to  your  college,  seeing  he  is  a 
New  England  and  I  think  a  Connecticut  man.  If  therefore 
when  his  kinsman  comes  over,  youl  write  him  a  proper  letter 
on  that  subject,  I  will  take  care  to  press  It  home."  Young 
David  Yale  was  in  due  season  lifted  bodily  out  of  rural 
North  Haven  and,  in  his  best  leather  breeches  and  country 
waistcoat,  piloted  across  the  sea  by  a  "Mr.  Dixwell"  to 
become  heir  to  the  great  Governor  Yale's  estates.  Some- 
thing fell  out  amiss  in  his  relations  with  his  wealthy  relative, 
however,  and  he  was  packed  home  again  by  the  next  Boston 
sailing,  to  live  the  remainder  of  his  life  on  his  North  Haven 
farm,  and  receive,  in  an  honorary  degree  which  the  College 
gave  him  in  1724,  his  only  tangible  reward  in  the  business. 
No  doubt  James  Plerpont  wrote  a  "proper  letter"  to  the 
crusty  old  Governor  when  the  boy  was  sent  over,  but  nothing 
came  of  it  for  some  time,  the  whole  affair  seemingly  having 
begun  wrong  with  the  future  famous  patron  of  the  College. 
Dummer,  however,  had  become  active  in  other  quarters 
than  Ellhu  Yale's.  In  that  first  letter  of  171 1  he  had  said 
that  he  was  "doing  what  I  can  to  gain  Dr.  Salmon's  Library, 
which  is  a  fine  one  indeed,  and  worth  six  of  that  at  Harvard 
College,  The  only  object  he  makes  Is,  that  all  Universities 
follow  too  much  the  Study  of  Heathen  learning  and  corrupt 
ye  doctrine  of  the  Gospel.  I  told  him  that  your  College 
Is  a  young  child  that  he  may  bring  up  to  his  hand  [wherein 
Dummer  took  a  rather  large  liberty,  as  far-away  agents 
often  will],  &  form  It  to  his  own  model,  upon  which  he  has 
sent  you  a  long  story  of  directions  for  the  students.  Inclosed 


294  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

in  this  pacquet,  &  directed  to  you.  I  have  not  had  time  to 
read  'em,  tho'  he  gave  me  the  letter  open.  I  believe  it  will 
be  well  for  you  to  answer  It." 

I  Imagine  that  James  Plerpont's  reply  to  the  venerable 
Dr.  Salmon's  "long  story  of  directions"  was  not  entirely 
businesslike,  so  far  as  Jeremiah  Dummer's  business-man's 
view  of  what  It  should  have  been  were  concerned.  For  in 
January,  17 13,  Dummer  writes  to  the  New  Haven  minister: 
"  'TIs  with  regret  I  must  now  acquaint  you  that  all  my 
labour  and  pains  with  Dr.  Salmon  are  at  an  end.  For  when 
I  had  brought  him  to  consent  to  give  his  Library  to  your 
Colledge,  an  apoplexy  took  him  off  before  he  had  time  to 
make  a  New  Will.  And  so  an  Old  one  took  place,  made 
several  years  since,  by  which  he  gave  that  great  valuable 
Library  to  an  Absolute  stranger,  that  he  had  seen  once  or 
twice  and  took  a  fancy  to.  I  have  endeavored  to  retrieve 
this  great  loss,  by  begging  a  Library  for  you  among  my 
friends,  &  tho'  my  acquaintance  with  men  of  Learning  & 
Estate  is  very  generall,  yet  I  did  not  expect  to  succeed  so 
well  in  this  Charitable  enterprise,  as  I  now  find  I  am  like 
to  doe.  For  I  have  got  together  a  pretty  parcel  of  books 
already,  for  you  to  begin  with,  &  I  hope  in  a  Years  time  to 
send  you  a  very  valuable  collection  with  the  names  of  the 
Benefactors." 

II 

Under  these  promising  circumstances,  James  Pierpont 
bestirred  himself  to  secure  for  his  Collegiate  School  as  per- 
manent a  hold  as  he  could  upon  the  apron  strings  of  this 
enterprising  and  valuable  ally.  The  Collegiate  School, 
however,  had  no  funds  with  which  to  pay  the  proper  com- 
missions to  Dummer.  So  I  imagine  that  Pierpont  was  one 
of  the  first  to  suggest  to  Saltonstall  that  the  Colony  make 
Dummer    its    accredited    and    salaried    London    agent,    as 


The  Gifts  of  Books 


295 


Massachusetts  had  done.  Governor  Saltonstall  must  have 
fallen  in  with  this  plan,  for,  at  the  same  session  of  the  Gen- 
eral Assembly  where  the  increased  grant  was  made  to  the 
Collegiate  School,  young  Jeremiah  Dummer  was  officially 
appointed  the  first  resident  Colony  Agent  at  London. 

This  was  in  October,  1712,  and  the  receipt  of  the  com- 
mission reawakened  the  already  thoroughly-fired  zeal  of 
the  young  gentleman,  and  led  directly  to  renewed  corre- 
spondence with  James  Pierpont  and  to  the  forwarding  of 
the  first  great  modern  library  that  had  as  yet  crossed  the 
ocean  to  New  England. 

James  Pierpont,  the  paucity  of  new  books  in  the  College 
library  in  mind,  seems  to  have  been  fully  aware  of  the 
importance  of  this  promised  gift,  and  to  have  spared  no 
pains  to  help  Dummer  collect  it.  He  now  evidently  secures 
the  signature  of  others  of  the  Trustees,   and  possibly  of 


296  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

Governor  Saltonstall,  to  a  strong  appeal  for  books,  and 
sends  it  to  London,  at  about  the  time,  probably,  of  the 
dispatch  of  Dummer's  Connecticut  Colony  commission. 
Dummer's  reply,  in  May,  17 13,  is  as  follows:  "The  Library 
I  am  collecting  for  your  Colledge  comes  on  well,  Sr  Richard 
Blackmoore  (to  whom  I  delivered  the  Committees  letter) 
brought  me  in  his  own  Chariot  all  his  works,  in  four  Vol- 
umes in  folio,  &  Mr.  Yale  has  done  something,  tho'  very 
little  considering  his  Estate  and  particular  relation  to  your 
Collony.  I  have  almost  as  many  Benefactors  as  books, 
which  makes  the  collection  troublesome  as  well  as  expen- 
sive. Sr  John  Davy  will  give  me  nothing,  notwithstanding 
his  promises  but  it  may  be  he  intends  to  send  what  books 
he  gives  himself.  If  he  does,  it  is  the  same  thing  to  me.  I 
hope  you  have  received  what  I  sent  by  Capt  Holland."^ 

Dummer's  mention  of  Sir  John  Davie  in  this  letter  no 
doubt  had  to  do  with  still  another  effort  of  James  Pierpont 
to  enlist  English  donations,  and  calls  to  mind  a  pleasant 
little  romance  that  goes  back  to  Pierpont's  college  days  at 
Harvard  for  its  beginning.  In  that  Harvard  Class  of  1681, 
in  which  were  James  Pierpont,  Noadiah  Russell,  and  Samuel 
Russel,  now  Trustees  of  the  Collegiate  School,  had  been 
one  John  Davie,  the  impecunious  younger  son  of  Sir  Hum- 
phrey Davie,  who  had  settled  on  Beacon  Hill  in  Boston 
and  whose  baronetcy  and  rich  estate  in  England  had  de- 
scended to  an  elder  son.  John  Davie  had  taken  a  farm 
just  outside  of  New  London  in  what  is  now  Groton,  and  had 
successively  been  town  clerk,  rate  collector,  constable,  and 
rate  recorder.  He  had  thus  been  a  suburban  member  of 
Gurdon  Saltonstall's  New  London  congregation,  and  could 

1  A  letter  from  Dummer  to  Timothy  Woodbridge  says  that  he  had  sent 
over  "books  &  globes"  by  a  previous  sailing,  and  that  he  should  "be  glad  to 
hear  how  your  Young  Academy  grows,  &  whether  you  have  built  a  con- 
venient receptacle  for  your  library,  that  I  may  send  you  Some  proper  Orna- 
ments to  furnish  it." 


The  Gifts  of  Books  297 

hardly  have  been  unaware  of  the  efforts  of  his  minister  and 
two  classmates,  Pierpont  and  Russel,  to  found  the  Colle- 
giate School.  The  story  has  it  that  it  was  on  a  hot  summer 
morning  in  1707  that  a  messenger  with  a  packet  of  imposing- 
looking  legal  documents  arrived  in  New  London  from 
Boston,  looking  for  him.  Davie,  so  the  story  goes,  was 
hoeing  corn  when  the  messenger  rode  into  his  village  street, 
and  was  having  a  bout  with  a  country  neighbor  named 
Packer  to  see  which  could  hill  the  most  corn  in  the  least  time. 
As  the  messenger  approached  Davie  (says  Harvard's  biog- 
rapher, Sibley),  "who  was  barefoot  and  with  his  shirt- 
sleeves and  trousers  rolled  up,  he  inquired  his  name,  and  on 
receiving  the  answer  struck  him  on  the  shoulder,  and,  raising 
his  hat,  exclaimed,  'I  salute  you.  Sir  John  Davie!'  "  The 
newly  created  Baronet  lost  no  time  in  accepting  the  docu- 
ments and  in  leaving  his  astonished  and  impressed  neighbor 
with  the  hoeing.  He  married  Gurdon  Saltonstall's  younger 
sister,  hastily  left  for  Boston,  dined  with  the  Massachusetts 
Governor,  and  sailed  for  England  to  claim  his  title  and 
lands,  the  income  from  which,  it  was  said,  came  to  some 
four  or  five  thousand  pounds  a  year.  Farmer  Packer,  visit- 
ing England  some  years  later,  searched  out  his  old  Groton 
neighbor,  and  found  him  living  in  style  in  Devonshire, 
where  he  was  high  sheriff,  and  where  the  Connecticut  visitor 
was  royally  entertained  by  him.  Sir  John  Davie,  so  the 
story  goes,  told  his  old  friend  that  for  all  his  sudden  wealth 
and  baronial  estates,  "he  had  been  happier  eating  one  dish 
for  dinner,"  and  that  "corn-beans."  His  death  some  years 
later  would  perhaps  not  have  occurred  from  "gout  in  the 
head"  had  he  remained  a  simple  Connecticut  farmer. 

Doubtless  Saltonstall  joined  James  Pierpont  in  recalling 
the  Collegiate  School's  needs  to  this  great  man,  their  com- 
mon former  friend.  For,  as  Dummer  had  expected,  Sir 
John  Davie  sent  over  some  books  on  his  own  account.  These 


298  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

arrived  some  time  during  the  year  17 14,  and  turned  out  to 
be  six  boxes  full, — about  two  hundred  volumes  in  all, — but 
mostly  theological  and  therefore  not  a  particularly  valuable 
addition  to  the  already  overburdened  divinity  files  of  the 
scant  Collegiate  School  library  in  the  Saybrook  parsonage. 

But  Jeremiah  Dummer's  long  effort  to  collect  a  library 
that  would  be  valuable  now  suddenly  bore  fruit.  At  the 
September  Commencement,  17 14,  James  Pierpont  laid 
before  the  Trustees  a  letter  from  Colonel  Alford  of  Boston, 
which  had  been  sent  to  Tutor  Noyes,  informing  him  that 
nine  boxes  of  books  had  arrived  from  London  and  that  these 
were  now  on  their  way  by  freight  (no  doubt  on  some  sailing 
vessel)  to  Saybrook. 

These  nine  boxes  contained,  as  every  reader  of  old  Yale 
history  knows,  the  first  part  of  a  very  considerable  library 
which,  when  the  second  installment  arrived,  brought  the 
total  up  to  the  imposing  number  of  seven  hundred  volumes, 
— one  of  the  largest  book  collections  in  the  New  England 
colonies.  Samuel  Johnson,  of  Guilford,  was  a  Senior  at  the 
Collegiate  School  when  these  books  arrived.  He  was  after- 
wards to  become  a  Tutor  and,  largely  through  the  influence 
of  these  books,  remodel  his  whole  intellectual  life  and  be- 
come an  Episcopalian  and  first  president  of  King's  College, 
afterwards  Columbia  University.  He  says  of  this  collec- 
tion that  "we  had  a  very  valuable  and  considerable  Library 
of  choice  Books  sent  to  us."  And  valuable  and  choice 
they  were,  and  well  chosen  by  the  cosmopolitan  Dummer. 
The  catalogue  of  them  is  well  known.  Among  them  were 
"All  the  Tatlers  and  Spectators,  being  eleven  volumes, 
in  Royal  paper  neatly  bound  and  gilt,"  presented 
by  Richard  Steele  himself.  Sir  Isaac  Newton  had  received 
Dummer  and  handed  him  from  his  shelves  the  second  edi- 
tion of  his  just-published  and  famous  "Principia,"  which  he 
had  brought  out  in   1687  ^"^  in  which  he  had  announced 


300  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

the  discovery  of  the  law  of  gravitation  which  he  had  made 
years  previously  when  a  professor  at  Cambridge.  He  also 
gave  a  copy  of  his  "Optics,"  the  Greek  "Thesaurus"  of 
Stephanus,  and  another  Greek  commentary.  Dr.  Bentley, 
late  the  King's  Librarian,  graciously  gave  his  own  works. 
Sir  Isaac's  successor  in  the  Lucasian  Professorship  in  Mathe- 
matics at  Cambridge,  William  Whiston,  churchman  and 
scientist  (who  was  later  to  lose  his  worldly  standing  through 
his  heretical  theological  opinions) ,  gave  a  copy  of  his  famous 
speculative  study,  wherein  he  urged  that  water  instead  of 
fire,  as  had  previously  been  taught,  had  been  the  agency  by 
which  cosmical  changes  had  been  wrought.  The  famous 
churchman,  Dean  Kennet,  gave  his  own  books.  Halley,  the 
astronomer,  who  had  at  Greenwich  Observatory  followed 
Flamsteed  with  remarkably  progressive  studies  of  the  tides, 
comets,  and  terrestrial  magnetism,  gave  his  own  edition  of 
ApoUonius. 

The  list  of  these  Dummer  books  is  a  long  one,  and  shows 
the  extraordinary  work  which  Dummer  must  have  done  on 
it.  Besides  these  famous  books  there  were  numerous  ser- 
mons, several  cantankerous  Episcopal  tracts,  and  a  broadly- 
chosen  list  of  standard  English  classics,  including  the  works 
of  Chaucer,  Spenser,  Milton,  Ben  Jonson,  Bacon's  "Essays," 
Butler's  "Hudibras,"  Temple,  and  Cowley, — Shakespeare 
not  appearing.  Dummer  had  given  a  large  number  of  these 
himself,  and,  besides  securing  the  interest  of  many  of  the 
leading  literary  and  scientific  men  of  the  day,  had  looked 
up  everybody  who  might  have  a  particular  interest  in  Con- 
necticut. He  had  thus  visited  the  now  elderly  Sir  Edmund 
Andros,  whose  adventures  at  New  Haven  and  Hartford  we 
have  chronicled,  laid  the  Collegiate  School's  needs  before 
him,  and  come  away  with  a  three-volume  translation  of  Jose- 
phus.  Andros  also  gave  Dummer  a  copy  of  Sir  Thomas 
Browne's  then  old  "Pseudodoxia  Epidemica,"  which  must 


The  Gifts  of  Books  301 

have  opened  the  eyes  of  the  minister-chirurgeons  of  the 
Colony  by  its  exposure  of  the  superstitions  which  the  famous 
author  of  the  "Religio  Medici"  saw  his  fellow  medical  men 
still  accepting.  The  former  Royal  Governor,  whose  heart 
must  have  mellowed  toward  his  erstwhile  independent  Con- 
necticut subjects,  had  also  donated  an  Armenian  Dictionary, 
quite  the  oddest  volume  in  the  collection.  Sir  Francis 
Nicholson,  who  had  succeeded  Andros,  likewise  gave  some 
books.  And  we  have  seen  how  Sir  Richard  Blackmore,  the 
Poet-Laureate,  who  had  just  disastrously  concluded  his 
attempted  continuation  of  Steele's  "Guardian"  in  "The  Lay 
Monk,"  had  gratified  Dummer  by  coming  to  his  lodgings 
in  his  own  chariot,  and  giving  four  volumes  of  his  works. 
Governor  Yale  put  in  from  thirty  to  forty  volumes,  also, 
but,  as  Dummer  had  said,  "very  little  considering  his 
Estate." 

When  we  recall  the  tiny  collection  of  dusty  theological 
folios  which  up  to  this  time  had  constituted  the  library  of 
the  Collegiate  School  at  Saybrook,  we  may  easily  imagine 
how  "valuable  and  choice"  this  broadly-chosen  gift  was. 
From  the  first  immigration,  hardly  any  current  English 
books  had  come  into  the  Colony.  In  but  a  few  cases  (as  in 
Chaplain  Thomas  Buckingham's  of  Hartford,  who  carried 
Milton's  "Comus"  with  him  when  he  went  to  the  French 
and  Indian  War  in  171 1,  with  the  Bible  and  a  psalm  book), 
do  we  find  contemporary  English  books.  All  of  the  scien- 
tific and  literary  life  of  the  England  of  the  day,  as  we  have 
seen,  had  been  a  sealed  book  to  provincial  Connecticut.  It 
is  doubtful  whether  Abraham  Pierson  had  known  more 
about  Sir  Isaac  Newton's  work  than  his  gravitation  theory, 
as  it  is  likely  that  his  "Physicks"  had  fallen  somewhere  be- 
tween the  long-discarded  Ptolemaic  theory  and  Copernicus. 
And  so  this  great  modern  collection  of  books,  bringing  the 
last  work  of  the  foremost  English  thinkers  and  literary  men 


302  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

to  the  little  village  of  Saybrook,  must  have  been  an  epoch- 
making  event. 

And  so  it  was  to  prove,  in  at  least  two  most  important 
ways  to  the  little  provincial  academy.  Dummer's  library 
was  to  produce  a  new  intellectual  start  in  life  for  at  least  a 
small  group  of  young  Connecticut  scholars  and  ministers, 
and  end  in  having  an  effect  on  the  School's  teachings,  and  it 
was  to  bring  about  a  situation,  for  the  School  itself,  which 
shortly  calls  for  attention. 

Ill 

The  death  of  James  Pierpont,  which  unexpectedly  oc- 
curred but  a  month  after  his  efforts  to  secure  the  Dummer 
books  had  succeeded,  marks  the  end  of  this  second  period  in 
the  Collegiate  School's  history.  Old  Judge  Sewall  wrote  in 
his  diary  when  the  news  reached  Boston,  that  it  was  "a  very 
great  Blow  to  that  Colony  and  to  all  New  England." 
While  we  have  to  rely  upon  such  references  as  these  to 
form  a  notion  of  what  James  Pierpont  was  like,  they  were 
doubtless  the  popular  impression.  In  the  ancient  pages  of 
the  Boston  News-Letter  for  17 14  we  find  him  referred  to 
as  "having  served  his  Generation  not  only  as  a  minister, 
but  [as  was  a  common  fashion  of  the  times]  also  been  a 
great  blessing  as  a  physician;  and  of  singular  use  as  there 
was  occasion,  to  the  government  by  his  wise  and  wholesome 
counsel."  Cotton  Mather,  whose  encomiums  on  New  Eng- 
land divines  were  more  or  less  colored  by  his  personal  rela- 
tions with  them,  and  who  was  given  to  highly  enthusiastic 
portraits  when  he  felt  the  inclination,  refers  to  him  as  'The 
most  Valuable  Mr.  James  Pierpont."  Of  him,  writes 
Mather,  "I  may  use  the  Terms  which  Patercidus  used  of 
One  that  was  in  true  Goodness  inferior  to  him,  Vir  in 
tantum  Laudandus,  in  quantum  Virtus  ipsa  intelligi  Potesti." 
And  he  goes  on  to  say  that  Pierpont  "has  left  us  a  few 


The  Gifts  of  Books  303 

Weeks  ago ;  but  left  with  us  a  fragrant  and  lasting  Memory 
of  a  very  Meritorious  Character.  How  memorable  for  his 
rare  Discretion;  his  bright  Holiness;  the  Spirit  of  his  Min- 
istry, and  Savour  of  his  Publick  Oblations ;  his  Extensive 
Genius  which  inclined  him  and  enabled  him,  to  Do  Good 
unto  Many;  the  various  Instances  wherein  our  Glorious 
Lord  made  him  a  Blessing  to  his  Church,  his  Neighborhood, 
his  Colony!  New-haven  becomes  a  Hadadrlmmon,  upon 
his  Expiration.  Every  Heart  there  is  in  his  Tomb,  every 
tongue  his  Epitaph!"  Which  was  true.  No  other  man  had 
done  as  much  as  he  to  found  the  School  or  to  maintain  It 
during  these  first  thirteen  years  of  repeated  discouragements 
and  all  but  obliteration.  He,  as  no  other  one  connected  with 
these  beginnings  of  the  future  Yale,  was  Its  "founder"  and 
first  pilot.  He  had  conceived  the  Idea,  secured  public  sup- 
port for  It,  steered  It  through  Its  first  crisis  and  thus  forever 
past  possibilities  of  the  church  and  state  control,  drawn  Its 
charter  so  that  It  should  not  wholly  be  a  theological  semi- 
nary, organized  It,  selected  Its  first  Rector,  secured  for  It  a 
Colony  church  creed  and  yet  succeeded  In  keeping  that 
church  out  of  it,  found  Colony  financial  support  (however 
meager)  for  It,  and  now  had  raised  a  modern  library  for  It 
out  of  intellectual  England.  More  fortunate,  however, 
than  old  John  Davenport,  he  had  lived  to  see  his  Colony 
college  an  established  fact,  rickety  as  was  its  support  from 
the  public  and  surrounded  by  dangers  of  outside  Interference 
as  it  still  was  when  he  died.  Had  he  lived  another  decade, 
I  fancy  that  we  should  have  a  more  satisfactory  story  to 
tell  than  will  appear  in  the  following  chapter.  Among  the 
names  of  the  leaders  In  Yale  history,  that  of  James  Pierpont 
stands,  with  John  Davenport's,  at  the  forefront  of  those  to 
whom  the  institution  owes  its  existence. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  A  SITE 

I 

HE  period  of  two  or  three  years 
which  we  are  now  to  review,  was  to 
f^  be  the  most  disturbing  and,  in  many 
ways,  the  most  critical,  in  the  whole 
history  of  the  Collegiate  School.  And 
I  suppose  that,  if  it  had  not  been  for 
^1  the  guiding  hand  of  Governor  Salton- 
r,,'A  Stall,  matters  during  them  would  have 
come  to  a  sorry  pass.  For  these  few  years  were  to  see  the 
Trustees  divide  into  three  factions  over  the  location  of  the 
School,  the  leadership  pass  into  new  hands,  the  scholars 
become  dissatisfied,  the  Colony  General  Assembly  under- 
take to  get  control  of  the  School's  affairs,  and  a  nearly 
successful  effort  made  to  split  the  little  academy  into  two 
parts  and  all  but  wreck  it.  Anything  like  a  detailed  chron- 
icle of  these  complicated  factors  would  be  a  tedious  business. 
But  we  should  be  able  to  follow  the  general  currents  of 
events,  and  thereby  come  to  a  clear  understanding  of  the 
outcome. 

Most  of  this  trouble  arose,  oddly  enough,  from  the  suc- 
cess which  James  Pierpont  had  had  in  securing  the  Dummer 
library.  The  arrival  of  these  books,  bringing  the  total 
number  of  volumes  in  the  School's  possession  up  to  nearly 
one  thousand,  made  it  necessary  to  house  them  safely  and 
in  a  more  public  fashion  than  had  been  the  case  with  the 
few  original  books  of  the  founders.     So  that  some  sort  of 


The  Struggle  for  a  Site  305 

a  permanent  college  building  was  necessary.  Without  funds 
with  which  to  build  such  a  house,  James  Pierpont  appears 
to  have  led  his  fellow  Trustees  in  another  effort  to  secure 
Colony  aid  for  it.  The  Dummer  books  had  been  sent  to 
Saybrook,  as  we  have  seen,  in  September,  17 14.  In  Octo- 
ber, the  Trustees  presented  the  facts  to  the  General  Assem- 
bly, in  session  again  in  the  Meeting-house  at  New  Haven, 
and  asked  for  money  with  which  to  erect  a  house  for  them. 
With  Governor  Saltonstall's  support,  a  petition  was  drawn 
up  by  the  Trustees,  and  an  Act  "for  the  building  of  a  proper 
house  for  the  Collegiate  School"  presented.  This  Act 
passed  the  Upper  House,  with  Saltonstall's  approval,  carry- 
ing an  appropriation  of  £200  for  the  purpose.  But  the 
Lower  House  declined  to  concur,  and  the  bill  was  laid  on 
the  table. 

Pierpont's  death  came  the  month  after  this  division  in  the 
Assembly.  Had  this  not  occurred,  I  fancy  that  the  train  of 
consequences  of  this  appeal  to  the  Colony  treasury  would 
not  have  been  just  what  they  were.  For  the  appeal,  as 
events  were  to  show,  had  been  a  mistake.  In  it  the  start 
had  been  made  toward  inviting  legislative  action  on  a  very 
vital  matter  to  the  School.  The  death  of  James  Pierpont 
removed  the  one  man  who  could  have  restrained  this  action, 
and  left  the  field  free  to  others  who  were  ready  to  forward 
it. 

So  that  when  the  Trustees  met  in  May,  171 5,  they  had 
a  serious  problem  before  them,  and  found  themselves  with- 
out the  steady  hand  of  Pierpont  to  guide  them  in  it.  At  this 
meeting  they  again  advanced  his  project  of  a  Colony  gift 
of  a  proper  house  for  their  new  books.  At  the  Assembly 
meeting  in  Hartford  which  immediately  followed,  the 
Lower  House  this  time  received  the  project  with  more 
sympathy.  It  now  agreed  willingly  enough  to  the  plan  for 
a  College  house,  but  voted  that  the  money  for  it  should  be 


3o6  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

raised  by  a  popular  subscription  among  "the  well-affected 
to  religion  and  learning  among  us."  The  Upper  House, 
and  Governor  Saltonstall,  however,  added  a  rider  carrying 
a  £ioo  appropriation  from  the  Colony  itself,  and,  the 
Deputies  again  refusing  to  spend  the  Colony  money,  the 
project  again  fell  through.  Again  brought  up  at  the  Octo- 
ber session,  17 15,  an  unexpected  event  resulted  in  an  actual 
money  appropriation  by  concurrent  action  of  the  two  houses. 
It  had  so  happened  that  the  old  boundary  dispute  between 
Massachusetts  and  Connecticut  finally  had  been  settled,  and 
some  106,000  acres  granted  to  Connecticut.  The  public 
sale  of  this  land  was  expected  to  provide  the  Colony  with 
a  large  sum.  With  this  expectation  In  mind,  the  Assembly 
saw  a  way  to  provide  the  needed  money  for  the  house  de- 
sired by  the  School  and  at  the  same  time  not  dig  Into  the 
depleted  Colony  treasury  Itself.  It  was  voted,  therefore,  to 
give  £500  to  a  building  for  the  Collegiate  School,  as  soon 
as  the  sale  was  made. 

With  this  substantial  encouragement,  the  Trustees  at 
once  set  about  determining  upon  their  use  of  the  money.  At 
a  special  meeting  held  In  April,  17 16,  It  was  therefore  voted 
to  Invest  the  coming  £500  In  a  "proper  building"  for  the 
scholars  and  books,  and  that  a  Rector's  house  should  "with 
all  convenient  speed  be  erected."-^  The  site  for  these  two 
buildings  was  to  be  Saybrook.     In  addition  It  was  voted  to 

1  This  vote  was  as  follows:  "The  Trustees  considering  the  great  neces- 
sity yt  ye  Collegiate  School  in  this  place  Be  Put  into  such  Circumstances  as 
may  giue  greater  Encouragement  to  all  yt  are  desirous  of  ye  Improument  of 
their  Sons  in  ye  academical  Learning  have  unanimously  agreed  and  Resolved 
yt  ye  five  hundred  Pounds  Granted  By  ye  Colony  to  this  School  together  with 
such  other  sums  as  may  be  gained  for  the  Erecting  of  such  Building  as  ye 
occasion  of  the  School  Requires  Be  forthwith  Improved  to  ye  End  that  a 
suitable  house  for  ye  Entertainment  of  ye  Schollars  with  Chambers  and 
Studies  as  well  as  a  hall  and  Library  as  also  a  convenient  Building  for  ye 
use  of  a  Rector  near  adjoining  thereunto  Be  with  all  convenient  Speed 
Erected  and  suitably  finished." 


The  Struggle  for  a  Site  307 

find  "a  gentleman  of  suitable  age  and  Learning"  for  Rector, 
"who  shall  Live  in  ye  house  provided  for  that  End  and 
shall  have  ye  advantage  of  Boarding  all  ye  Schollars  vnder 
graduates  Belonging  to  sd  School."  A  Tutor  was  also  to 
"Be  constantly  Maintained"  and  domiciled  "in  one  of  the 
Chambers  of  ye  College." 

II 

In  order  to  understand  the  remarkable  turn  which  events 
took  immediately  after  this  decision,  it  will  be  necessary  to 
recall  the  progress  of  another  factor  in  the  situation  which 
was  now  forming, — the  attitude  of  the  Collegiate  School 
scholars  themselves  toward  the  establishment. 

We  left  the  Collegiate  School  where  the  Senior  classes 
were  being  instructed  at  Samuel  Andrew's  parsonage  in 
Milford,  and  the  three  lower  classes  probably  at  the  Lynde 
house  in  Saybrook,  under  the  youthful  Joseph  Noyes  and 
WiUiam  Russell,  classmates  at  the  School  in  1709,  and  sons, 
respectively,  of  the  two  Trustees,  James  Noyes  of  Ston- 
ington  and  Noadiah  Russell  of  Middletown.  With  the 
arrival  of  the  great  Dummer  library  and  the  promising  out- 
come of  the  Trustees'  efforts  to  secure  a  house  and  a  resident 
Rector,  the  attendance  had  increased.  The  ten  scholars  in 
the  four  classes  in  17 10  had  jumped  to  twenty-five  in  17 16. 
And,  until  the  Trustees  passed  their  vote  in  the  latter  year, 
locating  the  new  house  at  Saybrook,  I  suppose  that  there 
was  no  inkling  of  the  serious  troubles  which  were  at  once 
to  arise  from  it.    But  these  were  brewing. 

It  will  be  recalled  that,  in  the  letters  to  the  "founders" 
from  Cotton  Mather  and  his  father,  in  1701,  the  advice 
had  strongly  been  given  that  the  School  should  not  be  estab- 
lished upon  "a  collegiate  way  of  living,"  as  the  term  was 
then, — that  is,  not  in  a  college  house.  The  Mathers  advised 
that  the  students  should  "board  here  and  there  in  the  town. 


3o8  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

where  they  can."  In  this  way  much  money  would  be  saved 
in  "college"  buildings,  etc.,  "only,"  Cotton  Mather  had 
added,  "let  not  the  scholars  board  in  any  families  but  such 
as  the  pastor  and  other  officers  of  the  church  may  under 
their  hands  allow,  as  fit  (in  regard  to  their  exemplary  piety) 
for  that  service  of  boarding  young  men  that  are  to  be  the 
hope  of  the  flock."  The  School  authorities  were  to  look  out 
for  this,  and  also  to  see  that  the  boarding-house  keepers  did 
not  "oppress  the  students  in  the  matter"  of  pay  (as  the  tribe 
has  not  infrequently  done  in  college  history) . 

Both  for  reasons  of  policy  and  of  finance,  the  Collegiate 
School  had  been  begun  on  this  necessarily  small  basis.  But 
the  experiment  had  not  proved  a  success.  The  Saybrook 
families  who  were  willing  to  take  in  the  energetic  youngsters 
in  the  School  in  17 16  were  not  numerous.  Only  one  of  the 
scholars  lived  in  Saybrook  and  one  in  Lyme,  so  that  there 
were  twenty-three  boys  who  had  to  find  lodgings  in  the 
village.  Many  of  them  had  to  board,  therefore,  in  the 
northern  part  of  the  town,  where  a  few  scattered  farms  then 
stood  where  Saybrook  proper  is  today.  These  youths  had 
a  mile  or  more  walk  down  across  the  wind-swept  neck  to 
Saybrook  Point  for  the  early  morning  prayers  that  opened 
the  School  day. 

Furthermore,  the  teaching  by  the  two  young  Tutors  could 
have  been  anything  but  first-class,  and  of  course  far  below 
what  could  at  that  time  have  been  had  at  Harvard  under 
the  progressive  President  Leverett  and  his  four  Tutors, 
Flynt,  Holyoke  (afterwards  to  be  president),  Robie,  and 
Sever.  That  this  was  an  important  matter  goes  without 
saying,  when  we  consider  the  seriousness  with  which  typical 
Collegiate  School  students  undertook  their  college  careers. 
To  the  ordinary  run  of  intelligent  and  ambitious  country 
boys  (and  from  such  the  Collegiate  School  at  this  period 
drew  most  of  its  scholars)   the  education  to  be  received  at 


The  Struggle  for  a  Site  309 

the  Colony  college  was  the  one  great  opportunity  of  their 
lives.  Once  graduated,  and  in  possession  of  that  limited 
general  knowledge  of  the  classics  yet  special  fluency  in  Latin 
composition  and  quotation  which  marked  the  educated  man 
and  gave  him  his  social  standing,  such  a  youth  had  his  career 
open  to  him,  either  in  the  pulpit  (with  the  comparatively 
good  income  of  the  day)  or  in  public  life  and  business.  So 
that  going  to  college  was  then  a  great  event,  for  which  the 
family  of  the  fortunate  youth  would  scrimp  as  they  would 
for  no  other  good  fortune.  The  result  was  that  when  these 
scholars  had  arrived  at  KiUingworth  or  Saybrook,  they 
ambitiously  set  about  getting  their  full  money's  worth  from 
the  Tutors,  and  were  inclined  to  be  unruly  if  they  failed  to 
get  it. 

Samuel  Johnson,  later  to  be  one  of  the  leading  intellectual 
lights  in  the  country,  had  been  a  typical  boy  of  this  sort. 
Johnson  was  born  in  a  country  deacon's  family  in  Guilford. 
His  father  was  a  "cloth  dresser,"  and  "fulled"  the  rough 
cloth  sent  to  him, — much  of  which  was  usually  worn  in 
those  days  unsheared  or  pressed.  Young  Johnson  had 
shown  "an  inquisitive  mind"  as  early  as  six  years  of  age; 
finding  a  Hebrew  commentary  at  this  time,  he  became  filled 
with  a  yearning  to  understand  it,  and  learned  it  from  his 
grandfather.  Full  of  ambition  to  know  more  of  the  scant 
book-knowledge  of  the  times,  he  went  to  the  town  school, — 
then  kept  by  the  youthful  Jared  Eliot,  later  to  become  one 
of  the  most  famous  scientific  men  of  his  day.  On  Eliot's 
leaving,  the  young  scholar  was  sent  to  North  Middletown, 
where  he  found  himself  better  educated  than  his  teacher. 
Returning  to  Guilford,  he  luckily  found  an  English-educated 
classical  scholar,  who  prepared  him  to  enter  the  Saybrook 
Academy  at  the  age  of  fourteen.  Yet  the  Saybrook  teach- 
ing was  poorer  than  the  precocious  Johnson  had  expected, — 
it  was  no  doubt  the  experience  of  others  besides  young  John- 


3IO  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

son  that  Tutor  Noyes  knew  less  of  Hebrew  than  they  them- 
selves. This  fact  necessitated  Samuel  Johnson's  hard 
application  to  it  on  his  own  account  outside  of  School  hours 
and  led,  in  the  cases  of  many  of  his  fellow  students,  to  a 
growing  dissatisfaction  with  the  poor  quality  of  the  Colle- 
giate School  teaching.  A  very  good  sidelight  on  this  is  to 
be  found  in  the  letter  from  Benjamin  Lord.  "Who  were 
the  chief  orators  in  my  day,"  he  writes,  "I'm  ye  less  able 
to  say  as  oratory  was  but  little  known,  studied,  or  famed,  to 
what  it  is  now  [1779].  Indeed,  Composition  and  Lan- 
guage were  then  scarcely  eno  in  vogue  to  excite  ambition 
where  there  might  be  a  genius  for  it ;  but  if  any.  Dr.  Johnson 
was  the  man  that  look'd  that  way.  As  for  the  Mathe- 
matics, we  recited  and  studied  but  little  more  than  the  rudi- 
ments of  it,  some  of  ye  plainest  things  in  it.  Our  advantages 
in  that  day  were  too  low  for  any  man  to  rise  high  in  any 
branches  of  literature."  To  many  of  the  scholars,  this 
intellectual  poverty  was  a  serious  matter. 

And  another  thing  must  have  added  to  this  discontent. 
Tutor  Noyes,  while  actively  interested  in  the  success  of  the 
School,  and  for  many  years  to  be  one  of  its  staunchest  friends 
and  supporters,  was  a  theologian  of  the  primitive  New 
England  school  even  thus  early  in  his  career.  I  suppose  that 
he  must  have  been  a  rather  helpless  sort  of  intellectual 
leader  for  the  intellectually-ravenous  young  men  under  his 
care.  Old  parishioners  of  his  remarked,  years  later,  that 
he  was  an  "unanimating  and  unpopular"  preacher.  So  he 
no  doubt  was  quite  as  uninspiring  as  a  teacher.  He  cer- 
tainly, all  his  life,  showed  none  of  that  religious  warmth 
which  was  to  become  the  great  feature  of  the  revival  under 
Jonathan  Edwards  and  Whitefield.  So  we  may  presume 
that  he  was  equally  cold  toward  such  things  during  his  days 
as  the  Saybrook  college  Tutor.  Samuel  Johnson  had  be- 
come mildly  interested  in  that  most  heretical  of  religious 


The  Struggle  for  a  Site  311 

movements  of  his  day,  Episcopacy,  when  a  boy  at  Guilford, 

and,  at  Saybrook,  was  beginning  to  lean  toward  the  Church 

of  England  ritual.     Two  classmates,  Daniel  Browne  and 

James   Wetmore,   became   inclined  in  the   same   direction 

when  they  began  with  Johnson  to  read 

the  books  in  the  new  Dummer  library.     ^        **-  y        s 

And,  as  others  of  the  scholars  under  ^'^^'v*Y  ^^^Of^a^ 

Tutor  Noyes   were   later   to   become 

leaders  against  him  in  the  "New  Light"  movement  in  the 

Congregational  church  itself,  I  imagine  that  in  his  theology, 

as  in  his  Hebrew,  he  did  not  entirely  meet  the  situation. 

Their  uncomfortable  boarding  arrangements,  the  poor 
teaching  of  Noyes,  and  the  necessity  of  finishing  their  course 
far  away  from  the  Dummer  books  at  Milford  under  Rector 
Andrew,  had  therefore  been  bringing  the  Collegiate  School 
youths  to  the  point  where  they  were  becoming  openly  dis- 
satisfied with  the  education  which  the  School  was  giving 
them.  When  the  Trustees  met  in  April,  17 16,  Sir  Noyes 
had,  indeed,  been  succeeded  by  Samuel  Russell  and  Benja- 
min Lord,  both  just  graduated.  But  both  were  young.  The 
clamor  of  the  discontented  scholars  had  now  become  more 
urgent  than  before,  and  the  Trustees  had  to  act  concerning 
it.  It  was  therefore  voted  to  add  a  third  Tutor,  in  Samuel 
Smith  of  Glastonbury,  three  years  out  of  the  School,  and  to 
permit  the  Seniors  of  that  year  to  finish  their  course  where 
they  pleased,  at  Rector  Andrew's  or  elsewhere  as  was  most 
convenient  to  them.  As  Samuel  Johnson  says,  "Immediately 
upon  this,  many  of  the  scholars  repaired  to  their  respective 
homes  and  where  they  might  have  instruction  to  their  minds, 
a  considerable  number  of  them  gathering  at  Wethersfield." 

Just  settled  at  this  latter  place  was  a  young  Harvard 
graduate,  one  Elisha  Williams.  He  was  a  well-educated 
man,  five  years  the  senior  of  the  oldest  Collegiate  School 
student.     He  was  related  to  the  families  of  John  Cotton 


312  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

and  Governor  Bradstreet,  so  that  he  was  well  born  in  addi- 
tion,— a  considerable  factor  in  Colonial  society  in  those 
days.  There  appears  to  have  been  no  objection  by  the  sea- 
coast  Trustees  at  this  time  to  this  young  man's  assuming 
voluntary  charge  of  such  of  the  Seniors  as  wanted  to  go  to 
him.  But  the  immediate  results  of  this  easy  compliance  by 
the  Trustees  were  to  be  disastrous  in  the  extreme. 

Ill 

Up  to  this  time  the  Collegiate  School  had  somehow  or 
other  managed  to  scrape  along,  in  spite  of  financial  diffi- 
culties, poor  teaching,  and  the  Saybrook  inconveniences. 
Much  of  this  had  been  due  to  Governor  Saltonstall's  con- 
tinued interest  and  good  advice.  But,  as  we  have  seen,  much 
more  had  been  due  to  James  Pierpont.  His  death  seems  to 
have  removed  the  balance  wheel  among  the  Trustees.  A 
new  element,  hitherto  in  the  background,  now  came  to  the 
front.  Pierpont  had  been  the  fifth  of  the  original  eleven 
Trustees  to  pass  off  the  stage  up  to  this  time.  So  that,  when 
the  Trustees  met  to  make  a  new  start  in  expectation  of  the 
Colony's  £500,  they  presented  a  new  combination  of  per- 
sonalities. Old  James  Noyes  and  Samuel  Mather  were 
still  Trustees,  though  both  were  giving  small  attention  to 
the  School's  affairs.  Of  the  other  original  Trustees, 
Timothy  Woodbridge,  Samuel  Andrew,  Samuel  Russel,  and 
Joseph  Webb  remained.  Old  Israel  Chauncy,  however,  had 
been  succeeded  by  the  now  elderly  Moses  Noyes  of  Lyme, 
Thomas  Buckingham  by  young  Thomas  Ruggles  of  Guil- 
ford, Noadiah  Russell  by  John  Davenport  of  Stamford,  and 
now  James  Pierpont  had  been  followed  by  young  Thomas 
Buckingham  of  Hartford.  Among  these  Trustees,  Pier- 
pont's  leadership  had  fallen  upon  no  one  natural  leader. 
This  leadership  there  are  evidences  that  Timothy  Wood- 


The  Struggle  for  a  Site  313 

bridge  now  attempted  to  assume,  to  be  shortly  opposed  in 
that  effort,  however,  by  the  newcomer,  John  Davenport. 

During  the  difficulties  that  at  once  arose  in  consequence  of 
this  factional  disturbance,  old  Samuel  Andrew,  Rector  pro 
tern,  appears  not  to  have  taken  a  leading  part  or  exerted 
what  little  authority  he  had.  The  Reverend  Andrew, 
scholar  that  he  was  (he  was  given  an  honorary  M.A.  by 
Harvard  during  his  Rectorship),  lacked  the  qualities  of 
public  leadership  which  we  have  seen  shown,  in  their  dif- 
ferent ways,  by  such  contemporaries  as  James  Pierpont, 
Timothy  Woodbridge,  Gurdon  Saltonstall  and  John  Daven- 
port. Describing  him,  years  later,  an  old  parishioner  said 
that  he  had  "great  powers  of  mind.  He  was,  however.  In- 
tellectual and  theological,  rather  than  religious.  He  was 
one  of  the  ablest  scholars  In  all  New  England."  It  appears 
from  another  ancient  source  that  Rector  Andrew  was  not 
in  the  least  Inclined  to  social  intercourse.  "He  spent  most 
of  his  time  In  his  study,"  It  was  said  of  him.  "He  never 
made  It  a  practice  [as  was  the  necessary  business  of  parsons 
in  those  primitive  days]  to  visit  and  converse  with  his 
people.  Seldom  was  he  known  to  leave  his  study  on  a  week 
day,  even  to  attend  a  funeral."  All  the  visiting  of  the  Mil- 
ford  sick  and  poor  had  to  be  done  by  the  elder  and  deacons. 
With  the  future  of  the  Collegiate  School  In  such  scholarly 
yet  Impractical  hands,  little  could  have  been  expected  by 
his  fellow  Trustees  except  troubles  of  various  sorts. ^ 

And  these  difficulties  now  came  on  with  a  rush.  It  will  be 
recalled  that  the  Trustees  had  voted  to  build  the  proposed 
new  college  house  at  Saybrook.  When  the  General  As- 
sembly met  at  Hartford  the  next  month,  Timothy  Wood- 
bridge    and  young   Thomas    Buckingham,   the   two    active 

1  Samuel  Andrew's  continuance  in  the  Rectorship  appears  to  have  been 
through  no  choice  of  his  own.  A  letter  by  him,  a  facsimile  of  which  appears 
on  page  334,  shows  that  he  remained  in  office  solely  to  save  the  School  from 
being  abandoned  as  the  result  of  the  controversy  among  the  Trustees. 


314  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

Hartford  Trustees,  brought  in  a  memorial  for  themselves 
and  "in  the  name  of  many  others,"  requesting  the  General 
Assembly  to  override  the  Trustees'  vote  fixing  the  college 
at  Saybrook,  and  to  order  it  permanently  placed  at 
Hartford. 

This  sudden,  move  must  have  been  received  by  the  re- 
maining Trustees  with  astonishment.  There  had  been  no 
indication  that  such  an  attempt  had  been  In  mind  until  the 
presentation    of    this    memorial.      In    fact,    both  Timothy 

Woodbridge     and    Thomas 
y^/      /^       ^  ^  Buckingham  had  been  at  the 

C/fu  'V^<^^-^  ^^""^^    April  meeting  and,  so  far  as 
^""^  we  have   any  record,   voted 

with  the  others  for  the  Saybrook  site.  When  we  consider  all 
the  previous  history  of  this  site  controversy,  however,  the 
action  of  the  two  Hartford  Trustees  appears  natural 
enough.  If  it  was  unprecedented  and  mischief-making.  As  we 
will  recall,  there  had  been  a  deadlock  on  this  question  from 
the  moment  that  the  original  promoters  of  the  School  had 
broached  the  subject  to  the  Colony  at  large.  Hence  the 
Collegiate  School  site  had  not  been  decided  when  the  charter 
was  granted.  It  had  been  because  of  this  deadlock,  with  all 
the  possibilities  of  trouble  that  would  have  ensued  if  the 
New  Haven  desire  had  been  pushed  at  that  time,  that  Pler- 
pont  had  attached  himself  to  the  New  London  County 
faction  and  agreed  upon  a  compromise  for  Saybrook.  We 
will  recall  how  Saltonstall,  then  the  New  London  minister, 
no  doubt  sided  with  old  James  Noyes  and  Thomas  Buck- 
ingham of  Saybrook  on  this,  and  how  Governor  Fitz-John 
WInthrop  had  thrown  his  Influence  for  that  village,  and,  in 
fact,  was  prepared  to  make  a  will  in  favor  of  the  School  if 
Saybrook  was  chosen.^    And,  in  spite  of  Saybrook's  distance 

1  Rev.  James  Noyes  was  originally  for  Saybrook  as  the  permanent  college 
site  because  he  believed  that  Governor  Winthrop's  £100  bequest  could  be 


The  Struggle  for  a  Site  315 

from  the  western  towns  of  the  Colony,  the  Fairfield  County 
Trustees  had  followed  Pierpont  in  voting  for  it.  Matters 
had  gone  along  well  enough  while  Pierson  was  in  charge, 
and  until  now  for  the  nine  years  that  had  elapsed  since  his 
death.  Pierpont  seems  finally  to  have  settled  his  mind  on 
the  question  and  to  have  remained  to  his  death  a  Saybrook- 
site  man,  if  for  the  one  purpose  of  not  reopening  the  old 
question  and  having  the  college  go  elsewhere. 

The  Hartford  faction  had  also  accepted  the  Saybrook 
site,  though,  I  imagine,  with  reservations.  But  events  had 
now  changed  their  attitude.  The  scholars  were  scattered 
over  the  Colony.  And  now  there  was  a  £500  Colony  grant 
for  a  "college  house."  Any  controversy  over  the  site  had 
hitherto  been  useless,  because  there  was  no  permanent 
establishment  possible  anywhere.  But  now  there  was  an 
actual  sum  of  money  in  sight,  and  the  town  where  the  college 
house  was  to  be  erected  from  it  would  necessarily  become 
the  permanent  Collegiate  School  site. 

But  another  and  more  personal  reason  existed.  Of  the 
twenty-five  boys  whom  we  have  seen  becoming  discontented 
with  the  poor  teaching  at  Saybrook,  thirteen  came  from  up 
the  river,  or  from  inland  towns  of  Hartford  County,  and 
one  had  come  from  Springfield.  Of  these  thirteen,  four 
were  in  families  in  the  churches  of  Timothy  Woodbridge 
and  young  Thomas  Buckingham,  and  one  of  these  was  the 
son  of  Buckingham  himself.  The  latter  was  a  Harvard 
graduate,  and  no  doubt  was  but  little  impressed  by  the  small 
educational  facilities  at  Saybrook  and  desired  his  son  to 
have  better.  The  arrival  of  young  Elisha  Williams  at 
near-by  Wethersfield  for  the  study  of  divinity  gave  Buck- 
ingham this  opportunity,  for  no  doubt  Williams  had  become 
well  known  to  him,  if  indeed  he  had  not  come  to  Wood- 
secured  in  no  other  way.  After  Winthrop's  death  Noyes  no  longer  felt  so 
strongly  for  that  location. 


3i6  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

bridge  and  Buckingham  for  his  theological  instruction. 
There  is  evidence  that  Buckingham  had  now  renewed 
Timothy  Woodbridge's  interest  in  securing  the  Collegiate 
School  for  Hartford,  and  had  been  the  instigator,  through 
his  son,  of  much  of  the  troubles  which  the  Saybrook  scholars 
had  been  making  over  their  Tutors  and  Rector  Andrew. 
In  his  manuscript  account  of  these  years,  Tutor  Samuel 
Johnson  makes  it  clear  that  he  believed  this  to  be  so.  The 
"Murmuring  of  the  Unruly  &  Ungoverned  Schollars,"  he 
says,  "advanced  to  a  Great  heigth  blown  up  (as  was  on 
but  too  good  Grounds  thought)  by  some  Gentlemen  up  on 
Connecticut  River,  &  also  by  some  belonging  to  Saybrook 
Town,  who  wished  not  well  either  of  the  School's  being  at 
Saybrook,  or  to  the  Tutors  or  both.  As  also  great  fault 
was  found  with  SayBrook  as  a  place  not  Suitable  for  the 
School,  &  thus  the  Tutors  were  disgraced  &  the  Town 
became  odious  throughout  the  Colony — &  this  mutiny  could 
not  be  heald  tho  many  Gentlemen  took  pains  with  the 
Schollars  for  that  End." 

The  bombshell  which  Buckingham  and  Woodbridge  now 
dropped  Into  the  Trustees'  camp  caused  "a  mighty  commo- 
tion," as  well  it  may  have.  It  was  the  first  public  breach  In 
the  hitherto  publicly  friendly  relations  of  the  Trustees,  and 
it  took  the  question  of  the  Collegiate  School  site  out  of  that 
body's  hands,  and  placed  it,  for  the  moment,  In  those  of  the 
General  Assembly.  Yet  there  was  much  support  from  the 
people  of  the  river  towns  for  this  change.  Among  other 
gentry,  Samuel  Welles,  a  wealthy  Hartford  citizen,  signed 
the  petition.  This  document  set  forth  "the  present  declin- 
ing and  unhappy  circumstances  in  which  the  School  lies,  and 
the  apparent  hazard  of  Its  being  utterly  extinguished,  unless 
some  speedy  remedy  be  applied."  The  location  at  Hart- 
ford being  such  a  remedy,  the  petition  added  that  money 
would  be  subscribed  If  such  a  course  were  taken,  and  that 


The  Struggle  for  a  Site  317 

many  neighboring  citizens  of  Massachusetts  would  contrib- 
ute and  send  their  sons  to  it.  The  memorial  requested 
Assembly  action  on  the  petition,  in  the  form  of  a  committee 
to  hear  the  question.  The  Assembly  promptly  acted  on  this 
request  and  summoned  the  Trustees  to  appear  before  such 
a  committee  on  May  22. 

IV 

The  division  among  the  Trustees,  as  a  result  of  this 
"unaccountable"  action  of  the  Hartford  members  (as 
Samuel  Johnson  dubs  it)  at  once  resolved  itself  into  three 
factions.  Timothy  Woodbridge  and  Thomas  Buckingham 
of  Hartford,  with  old  Samuel  Mather  of  Windsor  (now 
entirely  incapacitated  for  business) ,  composed  the  river-town 
group.  James  and  Moses  Noyes  stood  solidly  for  Say- 
brook.  A  third  group,  though  siding  with  the  latter  at  this 
time  (May,  17 16),  comprised  the  remaining  five  Trustees: 
Samuel  Andrew  of  Milford,  Samuel  Russel  of  Branford, 
Joseph  Webb  of  Fairfield,  John  Davenport  of  Stamford, 
and  Thomas  Ruggles  of  Guilford.  In  answer  to  the 
Assembly  summons,  six  of  the  Trustees  attended  the  com- 
mittee hearing.  Mather  still  remained  away,  and  the  three 
senior  members  of  the  seacoast  group  refused  to  appear  on 
the  ground  that  the  summons  was  not  legal;  the  Colony 
legislature,  said  they,  had  no  power  to  callthe  Collegiate 
School  Trustees  together.  No  doubt  there  was  a  lively  time 
at  this  public  meeting  over  the  School  site.  The  seacoast- 
faction,  led  by  John  Davenport,  who  was  now  rapidly 
coming  to  the  front  as  Pierpont's  successor  among  them, 
carried  the  day.  The  Assembly's  committee  agreed  to  give 
the  Trustees  until  the  following  October  to  get  together  on 
the  site  for  the  new  college  house;  "unless,"  says  Samuel 
Johnson  in  his  account  of  the  proceedings,  "they  could 
universally  agree   on  the  next   Commencement  where  the 


3i8  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

School  should  be  built,  then  they  would  desire  the  Assembly 
to  nominate  a  place  for  it." 


The  summer  of  171 6  now  intervened,  bringing  with  it 
such  an  agitation  of  the  Collegiate  School  site  question  as 
had  never  before  been  seen  in  the  history  of  the  academy. 
By  this  time  the  New  Haven  party  undoubtedly  felt  that 
Saybrook  eventually  would  have  to  be  given  up,  a  feeling 
that  must  have  been  accentuated  when  smallpox  broke  out 
in  that  village  during  the  summer  and  the  remnant  of  the 
scholars  left  at  Saybrook  had  to  move  in  a  hurry  to  East 
Guilford  (now  Madison),  where  the  former  Tutor,  now 
Rev.  John  Hart,  received  some  of  them,  the  others  going, 
we  are  told,  to  the  house  of  Tutor  Johnson's  father,  the 
cloth-dressing  emporium  of  Guilford. 

With  a  few  of  the  Seniors  at  Milford  under  Andrew, 
most  of  them  at  Wethersfield  under  the  unofficial  Williams, 
and  some  at  East  Guilford  under  Benjamin  Lord  and  John 
Hart  (Samuel  Smith  having  declined  to  serve,  probably 
through  the  Hartford  Trustees'  influence),  matters  now 
were  certainly  in  a  bad  way  for  James  Pierpont's  Collegiate 
School.  I  suppose  that,  however  low  the  little  academy  had 
sunk  before,  at  no  time  in  its  history  did  it  fall  to  quite  the 
depth  that  it  did  during  this  summer  of  171 6.  Certainly 
the  Fates  had  their  hands  set  against  the  Connecticut  college 
project.  Everybody,  however,  was  working  strenuously  to 
appear  at  Commencement  the  next  September,  prepared  to 
force  their  claims.  Lively  canvasses  for  money  contribu- 
tions now  began.  The  two  Hart- 
t^MfTLCLC  ^«'*4df  ^*^    iox^  Trustees,   content  with  the 

impression  which  they  had  made 
on  the  Assembly,  appear  not  to  have  succeeded,  if  indeed 
they  attempted,  to  raise  money  for  the  School  to  establish 


The  Struggle  for  a  Site  319 

itself  there.  But  the  Saybrook  and  New  Haven  factions 
were  very  busy  indeed.  While  old  James  Noyes  could  not 
have  been  very  active,  I  imagine  that  his  brother  Moses  was, 
as  no  doubt  were  several  Saybrook  residents.  By  Septem- 
ber there  had  been  raised  pledges  amounting  to  £1,200  or 
more, — a  large  sum  for  those  days, — if  the  School  should 
remain  there. 

And  it  is  now  that  the  ancient  New  Haven  claim  for  the 
Collegiate  School  took  the  tangible  turn  that  it  had  lacked 
up  to  this  time.  Treasurer  Ailing  no  doubt  took  a  leading 
hand  in  this  movement,  as  did  Rev.  Joseph  Noyes,  who  had 
just  become  the  successor  to  James  Pierpont  in  the  square, 
wooden  Meeting-house  on  the  New  Haven  Market-place, 
Their  canvass  was  an  unexpectedly  successful  one.  Nearly 
£2,000  were  subscribed  by  some  sixty-three  people.  And 
the  Town  of  New  Haven  did  something  as  well.  On  July 
30  it  voted,  probably  urged  by  Ailing  and  Noyes,  to  give 
eight  acres  of  land  "at  the  end  of  the  town"  if  the  Trustees 
would  settle  the  School  there. 

At  Commencement  that  September,  the  Trustees  came 
together  at  Saybrook  for  their  first  meeting  after  the  explo- 
sion of  the  two  Hartford  members.  Both  Woodbridge 
and  Buckingham  were  there,  and  we  may  well  believe  that 
high  words  resulted  between  them  and  such  a  fiery  repre- 
sentative of  the  others  as  John  Davenport  of  Stamford. 
The  senior  Trustees, — the  Noyces  ambo,  and  probably 
Andrew  and  Russel, — seem  to  have  made  every  effort  to 
secure  an  agreement  on  Saybrook,  but  without  unanimous 
results.  The  vote  stood  five  to  two  for  this,  Woodbridge 
and  Buckingham  firmly  holding  out.  The  matter  was  put 
to  an  adjourned  meeting,  to  be  held, — the  Trustees  still 
voting  five  to  two  on  even  that  question, — in  New  Haven 
the  week  before  the  Assembly  met  there  a  month  later. 

In  this  action  we  can  now  clearly  see  how  matters  were 


320  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

forming.  Up  to  this  time  the  seacoast  Trustees  had  been 
entirely  willing  to  remain  at  Saybrook.  As  we  have  seen, 
they  had  voted  with  the  two  Noyes  brothers  to  that  effect. 
But  this  was  not  a  popular  decision  for  the  Colony  at  large, 
and,  with  Hartford  as  the  probable  alternative  in  case  the 
Assembly  acted,  these  Trustees  now  appear  to  have  swung 
in  a  body,  under  Davenport,  for  the  alternative  New  Haven 
proposition.  This  suggestion  was  now,  it  would  appear, 
pressed  on  the  two  Saybrook  adherents,  the  Noyes  brothers, 
through  Joseph  Noyes.  This  young  man,  whatever  we  may 
think  of  him  in  his  later  attitude  toward  the  College  affairs, 
at  this  point  added  himself  to  the  succession  of  the  first  John 
Davenport  and  of  James  Pierpont  (to  whose  daughter, 
Abigail,  he  was  engaged  to  be  married  at  this  time),  by 
securing  the  action  which  was  finally  to  bring  the  Colony 
College  of  his  predecessors  to  New  Haven.  It  was  by  his 
efforts  with  his  father  and  uncle,  as  tradition  has  it,  that, 
when  the  Trustees  met  in  New  Haven  October  17,  17 16, 
the  vote  for  New  Haven  as  the  site  for  the  College,  still  five 
to  two,  became  seven  to  two,  and  a  de- 
772oft4  7^V^  •  cision.  Young  Noyes  had  won  over  his 
^  father,    James    Noyes,    and    his    uncle, 

Moses  Noyes,  who,  as  moderator  at  the  meeting,  stated  that 
New  Haven  was  his  second  choice. 

There  is  every  indication  in  the  reports  in  the  University 
archives  that  this  Trustees'  meeting  was  a  lively  one,  and 
that  ecclesiastical  fur  flew  throughout  the  evidently  pro- 
longed session.  The  first  question  was  to  confirm  the  pre- 
vious vote  to  remove  the  School  to  New  Haven.  Trustees 
Ruggles,  Davenport,  Webb,  Russel,  and  Andrew  voted 
'Yea";  "against  it  Mr.  Buckingham  &  Mr.  Woodbridg." 
Moses  Noyes,  Moderator,  was  for  Saybrook  first,  but  then 
for  New  Haven.  The  meeting  then  broke  up  for  a  three- 
day  interim.     Woodbridge  promptly  opened  the  adjourned 


The  Struggle  for  a  Site 


321 


SayjSroo^ 


session  with  a  proposition  to  leave  the  question  to  the 
Assembly,  where  he  had  good  reason  to  believe  he  could 
carry  the  Deputies  at  least  against  New  Haven.  Ruggles, 
Davenport,  Webb,  Russel,  and  Andrew, — the  "seaside" 
Trustees, — voted  him  down,  Buckingham  alone  standing 
with  him,  though  old  Mr.  Noyes  was  willing.  The  question 
was  temporarily  dropped  for  the  election  of  Samuel  Smith 
of  Glastonbury  as  Tutor.  The  seaside  Trustees  voted  this, 
Buckingham  and  Woodbridge  being  noncommittal.  Samuel 
Johnson  was  also  proposed  by  the  seaslders.  Woodbridge 
was  against  It  "because  of"  his  "Newark  call."  The  site 
question  was  then  reintroduced.  The  majority  five  voted  to 
begin  at  once  a  "Collegiate  School"  and  Rector's  house  in 
New  Haven.  Noyes  "suspended."  "Mr.  Buckingham 
chuseth  Silence.  Mr.  Woodbridg  salth  nay."  Voted.  It 
is  proposed  to  ask  the  Governor  to  help  in  the  "architech- 
tonlck  part  of  the  buildings."  The  five  agree,  "Mr.  Buck- 
ingham chuseth  not  to  act.     Mr.  Woodbridge  hath  nothing 


322  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

agt  advice."  The  five  seaside  Trustees  then  vote  to  demand 
the  £500  Colony  money  until  then  in  the  hands  of  Bucking- 
ham and  Woodbridge,  the  two  latter  not  voting.  The 
meeting  is  now  in  full  command  of  the  five  seacoast  Trus- 
tees, and  they  carry  everything  before  them.  Samuel 
Andrew  is  chosen  Rector  "for  the  present"  over  the  silence 
of  the  two  Hartford  ministers;  Sir  Johnson  appears  and 
accepts  his  Tutorship;  the  building  committee  for  the  Col- 
lege house  is  named  from  among  the  majority;  it  is  voted 
formally  to  inform  the  students  of  the  change  of  location 
of  the  School  to  New  Haven;  Samuel  Russel  is  asked  to 
write  to  Boston  for  the  "Books  &  Globes  given  to  the  Colle- 
giate School"  by  Dummer,  and  to  hand  them  over  to  the 
Rev.  Joseph  Noyes;  old  Moses  Noyes  of  Lyme  is  voted  the 
responsibility  of  the  books  still  at  Saybrook;  Tutor  Samuel 
Russel  is  ordered  to  bring  the  "Colledg-Records"  from  Say- 
brook  to  New  Haven;  the  Senior  Tutor  is  made  "Library- 
keeper."  Throughout  all  of  these  formaHties,  which  in  the 
total  firmly  established  the  Collegiate  School  at  New  Haven, 
neither  Woodbridge  nor  Buckingham  took  part  in  the 
voting.  The  seacoast  Trustees  were  in  high  feather.  John 
Davenport  roundly  signed  the  famous  minutes  afterwards 
as  scribe  and  dispatched  them  to  old  James  Noyes  at  Ston- 
ington,  who  "perused  &  well  considered  the  above  32  voats" 
and  signed  them.  Moses  Noyes  later  wavered  in  his  alle- 
giance to  this  decision  to  remove  to  New  Haven  and,  some- 
what shakingly,  joined  the  two  Hartford  Trustees  in  their 
later  efforts  to  undo  by  Assembly  act  the  decision.  But  the 
remaining  six,  including  James  Noyes,  stuck  by  their  guns, 
though  they  felt  it  necessary  to  reaffirm  each  of  these 
historic  votes  at  their  next  meeting. 

And  thus  it  was  that  New  Haven  secured  the  Collegiate 
School.  As  a  sop  to  the  discomfited  Hartford  Trustees, 
Stephen    Buckingham,    a    young    Harvard    graduate    then 


The  Struggle  for  a  Site  323 

minister  at  Norwalk,  was  elected  a  Trustee.  A  relative  of 
Thomas  Buckingham  of  Hartford,  and  the  son  of  one  of 
the  original  Trustees,  Ste-  ^      ^ 

phen  Buckingham  had  been  i3  itJan.c1n.StuJic/tyrt^tpK. 

one  of  the  five  Colony  min-  •^ 

isters  to  receive  the  degree  of  Master  of  Arts  at  the  first 
Collegiate  School  Commencement  in  1702.  His  election 
filled  out  the  last  of  the  number  of  eleven  Trustees,  which 
had  been  vacant  from  the  first.  In  order  to  bring  order  out 
of  chaos  in  the  teaching  force  of  the  School,  young  Samuel 
Johnson  was  chosen  Tutor,  and  Samuel  Smith  again  invited 
to  teach,  though  the  latter  appointment  was  again  refused. 
The  Reverend  Noyes  agreed  to  help  Tutor  Johnson,  and, 
until  a  permanent  Rector  could  be  chosen,  it  was  voted  to 
have  Samuel  Russel,  Webb,  Davenport,  and  Ruggles  alter- 
nate in  quarterly  visits  to  the  School  on  behalf  of  the 
triumphant  majority.^ 

So  the  first  Collegiate  School  teaching  in  New  Haven 
began,  thirteen  youths  coming  to  town,  and  doubtless 
boarding  where  they  could  while  going  to  Mr.  Noyes'  house 
down  Elm  Street  for  instruction.^  Fourteen  remained,  how- 
ever, at  Wethersfield,  and  three  or  four  went  back  to  Say- 
brook,  where  the  Rev.  Azariah  Mather,  lifelong  irre- 
concilable to  the  removal  from  Saybrook,  taught  them  at 
his  parsonage,  or  at  the  abandoned  Lynde  house  and  where 
the  great  Dummer  library  still  remained. 

1  A  grandiloquent  letter  from  the  Trustees  to  Jeremiah  Dummer,  in  1717, 
speaks  of  New  Haven  as  "the  Large  &  Pleasant  Town  of  New-haven  to  be 
the  kind  Alumna  to  bear  in  her  Arms,  &  cherish  in  her  Bosom  the  Infant 
Nursery  of  Learning  in  Our  Government." 

"Rev.  Joseph  Noyes,  according  to  maps  of  New  Haven  drawn  in  1724 
and  1748,  lived  in  Governor  Eaton's  old  mansion  of  the  New  Haven  church- 
state  days. 


JciyWxMxX   ^/triu^i^  On^ 


CHAPTER  VII 


THE  BEGINNINGS  AT  NEW  HAVEN 


T  might  well  have  seemed  that  the 
division  in  the  School  had  healed,  and 
that  now  all  was  fair  sailing. 

But  the  river-town  scholars  re- 
mained at  Wethersfield  under  Ellsha 
Williams,  and  to  them  were  added  ten 
Freshmen,  of  whom  six  were  Hart- 
ford County  boys,  including  among 
the  latter  the  famous  Jonathan  Edwards  from  East  Wind- 
sor, who  had  just  entered  at  New  Haven,  but  who  had  left 
on  account  of  dissatisfaction  with  Tutor  Johnson.  For  the 
next  two  and  a  half  years,  the  Collegiate  School  existed  as  a 
tripartite  institution.  Samuel  Andrew  remained  Rector  pro 
tern  throughout  this  period,  apparently  unable  to  bring  his 
academy  together  or  to  heal  the  difficulties  among  his 
Trustees,  if,  indeed,  he  made  any  extraordinary  efforts  to 
do  so.  With  Timothy  Woodbridge  still  looking  for  every 
opportunity  to  stop  the  movement  to  establish  the  School  at 
New  Haven  and  supporting  the  Wethersfield  defection  as 
a  lever  in  that  effort,  and  John  Davenport  of  Stamford 
leading  the  seacoast  Trustees  to  keep  the  School  at  New 
Haven,  these  two  or  three  years  must  have  seen  plenty  of 
excitement.    In  spite  of  the  hopeful  prospects  for  a  college 


The  Beginnings  at  New  Haven  325 

house  at  New  Haven,  the  whole  enterprise  promised  again, 
in  17 17,  to  come  to  an  ignominious  and  disastrous  end. 

It  will  assist  us  best,  I  fancy,  in  visualizing  what  was  left 
of  the  Collegiate  School  life  during  these  years,  to  become 
acquainted  first  with  the  New  Haven  conditions,  and  then 
the  situation  at  Wethersfield,  and  then  recall  the  final  fight 
of  the  Hartford  faction.  We  may  thus  arrive  at  the  end 
of  the  long  struggle  which,  through  unexpected  aid,  finally 
and  permanently  settled  the  academy  at  New  Haven. 

II 

Tradition  has  it  that  the  vote  of  the  majority  of  the 
Trustees  to  remove  the  Collegiate  School  to  New  Haven 
was  based  on  the  understanding  that  two  good  town  lots, 
one  for  the  college  and  one  for  the  Rector's  house,  should 
be  at  the  disposal  of  the  School. 

These  two  lots  were  at  the  southwest  corner  of  the  old 
Market-place,  where  Osborn  Hall  and  College  Street  Hall 
now  stand.  The  former,  desired  by  the  Trustees  for  the 
"College  house,"  was  known  at  the  time  as  "Mrs.  Hester 
Coster's  lot."  It  was  some  205  by  274  feet,  at  the  present 
corner  of  College  and  Chapel  Streets.  In  the  original  divi- 
sion of  the  Colony  land,  this  lot  had  been  granted  to  one 
Joshua  Atwater,  a  London  merchant,  who  had  been  Treas- 
urer of  the  New  Haven  Jurisdiction.  On  it  he  had  built  a 
large  house  facing  the  wooded  Market-place.  This  he  had 
sold  to  William  Tuttle,  one  of  his  fellow  settlers  and  a 
careless  sort  of  person,  whose  troubles  over  fencing  his 
"Indian's  land"  had  previously  caused  a  town  vote  In  favor 
of  the  Indians,  "that  we  may  not  have  such  complaints  of 
cattle  and  hogs  spoiling  their  corn,  which  they  say  makes 
their  squaws  and  children  cry."  Tuttle  In  turn  had  sold  it, 
just  after  the  arrival  of  James  Plerpont  to  be  the  town 
minister,  to  a  Mrs.  Hester  Coster,  a  devout  member  of 


326  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

Pierpont's  church,  and  she,  dying  in  1691,  had  willed  the 
lot  to  the  church  and  ordered  its  income  used  to  support 
the  "lectures"  which  we  have  seen  James  Pierpont  giving  in 
the  neighborhood. 

The  original  Atwater  mansion  having  become  untenant- 
able by  17 1 6,  and  the  income  from  it  negligible,  the  church 
deacons  willingly  agreed  to  the  Reverend  Noyes'  proposal 
that  they  dispose  of  the  old  Atwater  lot  to  the  Collegiate 
School,  whose  Trustees  had  decided  upon  it  as  the  best  site 
for  their  enterprise.  An  acre  and  a  quarter  of  it  was 
accordingly  sold  to  the  School  "for  twenty  six  pounds  current 
money." 

•  The  site  for  the  proposed  Rector's  house,  facing  the 
Coster  lot  across  what  is  now  Chapel  Street,  and  across 
College  Street  from  Captain  Miles'  Tavern,  had  originally 
been  the  homestead  of  the  Rev.  William  Hooke.  He,  also, 
had  left  it  to  the  New  Haven  church,  and  it  was  at  this  time 
an  ancient  farmhouse.  In  poor  repair,  set  back  from  the 
present  Chapel  Street  in  its  garden  and  orchard.  This  also 
was  sold  to  the  Trustees. 

With  these  two  well-situated  lots,  facing  each  other  across 
the  shady  main  street  of  the  upper  town,  the  Trustees  imme- 
diately set  about  building  their  "College  house"  on  the 
first  of  them.  The  School  treasury  contained  an  accumula- 
tion of  some  £125  at  this  time,  and,  so  the  historian  Trum- 
bull tells  us,  the  first  £250  of  the  Colony  grant  was  now 
actually  In  hand.  Regardless  of  the  Hartford  opposition,  it 
had  been  voted  to  put  this  money,  and  what  was  paid  in 
from  the  New  Haven  pledges,  Immediately  Into  the  pro- 
posed building,  the  haste  no  doubt  being  In  order  to  clinch 
the  New  Haven  site  by  erecting  a  building  on  it  as  soon  as 
possible.  All  this  had  been  in  October,  17 16.  The  New 
Haven  support  had  been  increased  in  December  by  the 
appropriation  of  land  In  the  "Yorkshire  quarter,"  and  now. 


The  Beginnings  at  New  Haven  327 

in  January,  17 17,  actual  building  began,  in  the  face  of 
renewed  attacks  by  the  Hartford  Trustees  which  we  shall 
refer  to  later.  A  building  committee, — consisting  of  Rector 
Andrew  and  Trustees  Russel,  Webb,  Davenport,  and 
Ruggles, — had  been  appointed,  and  this  committee  now 
found  itself  in  possession  of  elaborate  notions  as  to  "the 
architechtonick  part  of  the  buildings,"  from  Governor 
Saltonstall,  whose  great  mansion  on  the  shores  of  what  is 
now  Lake  Saltonstall  had  been  the  wonder  and  admiration 
of  the  entire  Colony.^  Henry  Caner,  a  Boston  carpenter 
who  had  made  a  reputation  by  his  recent  repairs  on  King's 
Chapel,  was  given  the  contract,  and  by  September,  1717, 
the  Collegiate  School's  first  building  was  well  under  way. 

During  these  two  years,  171 6-17 17,  the  New  Haven  main 
part  of  the  Collegiate  School  had  been  getting  along  as  best 
it  could,  without  a  library,  and  with  the  dozen  or  more 
scholars  boarding  about  town,  probably  coming  to  Samuel 
Johnson's  lodgings  or  Mr.  Noyes'  house  for  instruction,  and 

1  Governor  Saltonstall's  house  in  East  Haven  was  one  of  the  finest  in 
Connecticut.  Mr.  Thomas  R.  Trowbridge  described  it  years  ago,  from 
personal  knowledge,  as  a  house  that  had  evidently  been  "intended  for  the 
residence  of  a  wealthy  and  important  personage."  "A  broad  hall  and 
massive  oaken  stairway,"  he  wrote,  "was  the  feature  of  the  broad  central 
hall."  Triangular  cupboards  were  in  the  corners  of  the  lower  rooms. 
There  were  brass  finishings  throughout  the  house,  and  much  wainscoting. 
There  was  an  old  English-style  hiding  place  back  of  the  chimney.  The 
"room  of  state"  was  on  the  lower  floor,  and  here  hung,  "for  nearly  one 
hundred  and  twenty  years,  the  famous  'Leathern  tapestry,'  representing  a 
stag  hunt  in  a  forest,  with  a  large  and  imposing  retinue  of  huntsmen,  horses, 
and  hounds;  it  covered  the  four  sides  of  the  room  and  was  imported  from 
England.  These  'leather'  hangings  were  famous  throughout  the  state,  and 
for  years  were  gazed  at  with  admiration  by  our  primitive  ancestors,  such 
magnificence  rarely  being  seen  in  those  days.  Some  pieces  of  this  'tapestry' 
are  in  the  possession  of  the  descendants  of  the  Governor  still."  Other  pieces 
are  in  the  Connecticut  Historical  Society  rooms  at  Hartford,  but  the  great 
part  of  this  "tapestry"  fell  the  victim  of  visitors'  knives,  and  a  good  deal 
more  of  it  finally  became  parts  of  the  saddles  and  wagon  seats  of  the 
neighboring  farmers. 


The  Beginnings  at  New  Haven  329 

attending  the  Reverend  Noyes'  Meeting-house  on  Sabbath 
days.  The  regularly-appointed  assistant  to  Sir  Johnson, 
Samuel  Smith  of  Windsor,  having  steadily  declined  to  come 
to  New  Haven,  the  senior  Tutor  was  sent  by  the  Trustees 
to  Wethersfield  to  reconcile  him  to  the  majority  party,  but 
to  no  purpose.  So  that  Samuel  Johnson,  well  equipped  as 
he  was  to  take  the  responsibility,  found  it  necessary  to  have 
the  Reverend  Noyes  take  some  of  his  classes,  and  get  along 
as  best  he  could  with  the  others. 

This  low  condition  of  the  original  faction  of  the  divided 
Collegiate  School  would  undoubtedly  have  sunk  to  even 
greater  depths  had  it  not  been  for  the  character  and  the 
intellectual  power  of  Samuel  Johnson,  its  youthful  Tutor. 
Yet  even  he  was  depressed.  "Things  looked  dark  &  melan- 
choly," he  afterwards  wrote  of  this  period,  "&  even  spight- 
ful  &  malicious."  The  full  burden  of  the  task  of  meeting 
this  situation  devolved  upon  him,  practically  alone. 

We  have  already  made  this  young  man's  acquaintance. 
He  was  a  hard  student,  and  a  scholar  and  theologian  of  an 
unusually  open  mind  for  his  day.  And  he  had  the  additional 
advantage  of  being,  so  tradition  goes,  a  man  of  exceptional 
gifts  as  a  leader  of  young  men, — though  Jonathan  Edwards 
did  not  think  so.  He  had  probably  brought  over  to  New 
Haven  at  least  a  handful  of  the  more  Important  volumes  of 
the  Dummer  collection,  still  housed  at  Saybrook,  for  the 
indications  are  that  during  these  two  years  he  was  giving  a 
great  deal  of  study  to  them.  One  of  these  books,  Sir  Isaac 
Newton's  personal  gift  of  his  own  works,  appears  to  have 
been  particularly  Interesting  to  him.  His  biographer,  Dr. 
Chandler,  says  that  as  soon  as  he  had  put  his  hands  on  this 
unknown  treasure,  young  Johnson  had  become  fired  with  an 
ambition  to  master  the  great  Englishman's  scientific  theories, 
startling  as  they  must  have  seemed  to  the  starved  Intellect 
of  this  young  New  England  Congregational  minister.     But 


330  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

Johnson  had  never  been  a  mathematical  prodigy,  and  he 
found  the  scant  knowledge  that  he  had  imbibed  under 
Tutors  Noyes  and  Fiske  insufficient  for  the  purpose.  So  he 
had  begun,  just  out  of  the  Collegiate  School  and  the  single 
Tutor  in  it,  to  make  up  for  what  he  had  lost.  During  these 
first  two  years  Johnson  had  proceeded  to  inform  himself  in 
mathematics  with  such  success  that  Newton's  "Principia" 
and  "Optics"  became,  we  are  told,  at  least  intelligible  to 
him,  and  certainly  revised  his  scientific  idea  from  the 
bottom  up. 

In  September,  17 17,  the  first  Collegiate  School  Com- 
mencement was  held  at  New  Haven,  no  doubt  in  the 
Reverend  Noyes'  Meeting-house  on  the  public  square,  with 
Rector  Andrew  in  the  pulpit  and  Governor  Saltonstall 
beside  him.  Four  boys  were  graduated.  Samuel  Johnson 
on  this  occasion  received  the  degree  of  Master  of  Arts,  and 
the  Trustees,  meeting  after  the  public  ceremonies,  no  doubt 
at  Mr.  Noyes'  parsonage,  gave  him  an  assistant  in  the 
person  of  Rev.  Joseph  Moss  of  Derby,  who  with  the  Rever- 
end Noyes  now  took  the  Seniors,  the  three  lower  classes 
being  taught  by  Johnson  alone.  During  the  college  year 
1 7 17-17 1 8,  this  arrangement  was  maintained  as  well  as  it 
could  be  under  such  disadvantageous  circumstances.  But  by 
the  end  of  that  year  the  new  "College  house"  was  nearly 
ready,  and  Samuel  Johnson,  as  we  shall  see,  moved  into  it. 

Ill 

During  all  this  time,  Elisha  Williams  had  been  maintain- 
ing another  section  of  the  Collegiate  School  at  his  farmhouse 
just  outside  of  Wethersfield.  Details  are  lacking  of  this 
Wethersfield  enterprise,  so  that  we  do  not  know  how  it  was 
managed,  where  the  scholars  boarded,  or  what  different 
course  of  study,  if  any,  from  that  at  New  Haven,  was  given. 


The  Beginnings  at  New  Haven 


331 


I  imagine,  however,  that  the  youths  who  went  up  daily  over 
the  rough  back-country  roads  to  the  Williams'  village  farm- 
house found  themselves  in  an  intellectual  atmosphere  that 
was  charged  with  energy.  For  Elisha  Williams  was  no 
ordinary  man.  He  seems  to  have  been  of  a  restless  tem- 
perament, full  of  vim  and  tireless  mental  activity,  and, 
withal,  a  young  man  of  rather  unusual  qualities  and  a 
winning  manner.  There  was  something  in  him  of  his 
ancestors,  John  Cotton  and  Governor  Bradstreet.  He  had 
adventurously  voyaged  to  Nova  Scotia  after  leaving  Har- 
vard to  preach  to  the  fishermen.  He  was  now  studying 
divinity  and  helping  out  his  finances  by  working  his  farm. 
He  was  elected  by  his  town  a  Deputy  at  the  Assembly  in 
1 7 17,  holding  the  clerkship  of  the  Lower  House  for  several 
sessions.  He  was  to  have,  in  17 19,  a  severe  illness  and 
become    "sanctified"    by   it   to   such   an   extent   as   to   quit 


332  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

politics  for  the  ministry  and  become  the  parson  at  Newing- 
ton.  In  1739,  he  was  to  enter  Colony  politics  again,  with 
his  eye  on  the  Governorship,  and  become  a  judge  of  the 
Superior  Court.  His  roving  disposition  and  great  energy 
were  then  to  take  him,  as  chaplain  of  the  Connecticut  troops, 
in  the  audacious  and  successful  attack  on  Louisburg,  out  of 
which  he  was  to  come  colonel  of  a  Connecticut  regiment 
and  commander-in-chief  of  the  Colony  forces  in  the  follow- 
ing campaign  in  Canada.  Business  regarding  his  troops'  pay 
taking  him  to  England  in  1749,  he  was  to  be  presented  in 
London  society  to  a  beauty  of  the  day, — a  Miss  Scott, — by 
Dr.  Doddridge  as  "another  praying  colonel"  and  marry 
her  out  of  hand,  to  the  discomfiture  of  the  great  man,  who 
was  currently  believed  to  be  a  suppliant  for  the  lady's 
affections  himself.     With  this  fine  lady — 

Too  lovely  maid,  possess'd  of  every  Art 
To  charm  the  fancy  and  command  the  heart 

(Dr.  Doddridge  had  written  of  her) — Colonel  Williams 
was  to  return  to  New  England,  and,  after  filling  further 
public  offices,  to  die  at  that  Wethersfield  farm  at  which,  as 
a  youth,  he  had  taught  the  dissenting  scholars  of  Samuel 
Johnson's  Collegiate  School. 

If  the  truth  were  known,  this  first  and  highly  irregular 
proceeding  under  Elisha  Williams  at  Wethersfield  was  an 
educational  success.  Judging  by  his  results  at  Yale  College 
a  little  later,  and  the  admiration  felt  for  him  by  such  ambi- 
tious students  as  young  Jonathan  Edwards,  Williams  must 
have  had  a  thoroughgoing  academy  there,  small  as  it  was. 
In  1719  he  bought  the  Wadhams  house  on  the  southeast 
side  of  Broad  Street,  between  (according  to  the  old 
Wethersfield  records)  the  houses  of  John  Warner  and 
Richard  Montague.  The  Rev.  Stephen  Mix  was  the 
minister  there  at  this  time,  and  is  said  to  have  assisted  in 


The  Beginnings  at  New  Haven  333 

the  teaching:  a  Wethersfield  antiquarian  is  of  the  opinion 
that  some  of  the  recitations  of  the  Collegiate  School 
scholars  may  have  been  in  his  parsonage.  It  was  a  common 
custom  of  the  times  to  own  Negro  or  Indian  slaves.  The 
Rev.  Timothy  Woodbridge  of  Hartford  owned  an  Indian 
boy,  John  Waubin,  whom  he  "publickly  engaged"  to  bring 
up  "in  the  Christian  religion."  This  Collegiate  School 
Trustee  also  had  Negro  slaves,  for  a  few  years  later  he 
was  to  sell  a  thirteen-year-old  Negro  boy  named  "Thorn" 
"in  plain  and  open  market,"  and  his  wife  was  given  another 
named  "Tom."  The  Rev.  Elisha  Williams  owned  a  squaw 
Indian  slave  during  his  Wethersfield  Collegiate  School  days. 
This  squaw  had  a  son,  "Ambo,"  born  in  17 15.  "Ambo" 
was  to  grow  to  become  a  soldier  in  the  War  of  1756  and 
march  against  the  French  in  Eliphalet  Whittlesey's  com- 
pany with  seven  others  of  his  kind.  When  the  Collegiate 
School  was  at  Wethersfield  a  female  child,  "Desire,"  was 
born  to  Williams'  slave  squaw,  thus  adding  another  inter- 
esting member  of  the  Tutor's  household. 

IV 

It  would  be  too  long  a  story  to  narrate  here  the  continued 
series  of  efforts  which  the  two  Hartford  Trustees,  Wood- 
bridge  and  Thomas  Buckingham  (aided  by  Stephen  Buck- 
ingham), made  to  settle  the  School  at  Hartford  during  this 
period  from  May,  1716,  to  June,  17 19.  Looked  at  from 
one  point  of  view,  this  was  a  most  disturbing  and  un- 
fortunate affair.  Voting  as  they  did,  for  Saybrook,  it  had 
been  a  highly  extraordinary  thing  for  Woodbridge  and 
Buckingham  to  bolt,  as  one  might  say,  the  Trustee's  unani- 
mous action,  and  ask  the  General  Assembly  to  undo  it. 
And  it  was  an  extraordinary  act,  certainly,  to  abet  the  Say- 
brook  scholars  In  their  dissatisfaction  (as  all  traditions  unite 


334 


The  Beginnings  of  Yale 


tanaffUT' 


'Jh 


f^ii^'^^' 


'23-'Vnr- 


U^UfOtrxj 


The  above  letter  by  Rector  Andrew,  which  shows  his  aloofness  from 
the  School  and  indicates  his  desire  to  be  relieved  of  its  management,  runs 
as  follows:  "Worthy  Sr  Haveing  received  two  Letters  from  yourself e 
about  your  Classes  takeing  their  second  degree  this  Commencement  I  could 
not  speedily  answer  to  the  first,  whether  there  would  be  any  such  time,  or 
when  or  where  it  would  be,  if  there  was  any  such  thing;  as  to  the  other 
inquiry,  whether  it  would  be  expedient  for  any  of  yourselves  to  seek  a 
second  degree  at  such  a  time,  it  was  not  meet  for  me  to  direct  in  that 
matter,  your  own  inclination  to  it  must  guide  and  direct  you;  the  place 
where  the  Commencement  may  be,  can  be  no  discouragement  to  some,  and 
I  know  not  why  it  should  be  to  any,  seeing  New  Haven  cant  be  Judged 
inferior  to  Saybrook,  unless  because  the  last's  being  the  birthplace  of  some 
should  give  it  the  prheminence  in  that  Judgment;  but  it  seemed  most  prob- 
able to  me,  that  my  possible  concernment  in  the  matter  might  be  the  greatest 


The  Beginnings  at  New  Haven  335 

in  saying  that  they  did)  and  defection  to  Wethersfield.  It 
was  a  peculiar  act,  for  Trustees  of  the  Colony  college,  to 
set  up  a  rival  establishment  at  Wethersfield,  and  practically 
place  an  outsider,  in  Elisha  Williams,  over  it  as  of  equal 
rank  with  Rector  Andrew  of  Milford,  It  is  difficult  to 
understand  why  the  effort  to  remove  the  School  to  Hart- 
ford was  kept  up  so  long,  even  after  the  new  college  building 
had  been  erected  at  New  Haven. 

Yet  there  would  probably  appear  more  extenuating  cir- 
cumstances than  we  now  have  in  mind,  were  we  to  know 
more  about  the  conditions  that  prompted  these  various  and, 
to  the  majority  Trustees,  treasonable  acts.  I  imagine  that 
local  pride  had  had  something  to  do  with  this,  as  well  as 
the  traditional  jealousies  between  Hartford  and  New 
Haven  pubhc  leaders.  And  I  suppose  that  a  dynamic  man 
like  Woodbridge  found  little  that  was  to  his  fancy  in  such 
a  highly  respectable  and  scholarly,  but,  withal,  inactive 
person  as  his  former  Harvard  classmate,  the  good  Rector 
Andrew  of  Milford.  On  the  whole,  I  think  a  thorough 
study  of  this  whole  period  might  show  that  the  polished  and 

discouragement  together  with  the  unsettled  state  of  the  school,  and  the  great 
opposition  against  New  Haven ;  as  to  myself e  I  have  Laboured  with  the 
Trustees,  that  a  more  suitable  person  might  be  improved  to  give  degrees, 
not  being  ambitious  either  of  the  Honour  or  advantage,  and  should  have 
absolutely  refused,  if  it  had  not  been  such  a  time,  wherein  differences  among 
ourselves  might  have  blasted  our  present  design;  it  is  something  difficult  for 
me  to  offer  Questions,  which  have  not  been  formerly  disputed,  but  I  shall 
offer  the  enclosed  to  your  selves,  from  which  you  may  choose  such  as  are 
best  pleasing,  which  have  not  been  Lately  debated  avoiding  to  the  best  of 
your  remembrance;  for  my  memory  is  too  brittle  to  keep  long  in  mind  things 
of  such  a  nature,  being  concerned  with  greater  matters;  with  all  the  regards 
to  the  Revd  Mr.  Noyes  and  yourselfe,  praying  that  the  only  wise  God  would 
bless  your  Labours  for  the  advancement  of  religion  and  Learning  among  the 
students,  in  the  Collegiate  school  at  New  Haven,  I  am,  worthy  sr 

your  very  humble  servant 

SAMUEL  ANDREW 

Milford,  July.  23.  1717." 


336  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

cultivated  Hartford  leader  had  never  been  of  the  New 
Haven  persuasion  in  many  things,  theological  and  educa- 
tional, and  was  entirely  ready,  when  the  first  opportunity 
came,  to  swing  the  Collegiate  School  over  to  his  neighbor- 
hood and  to  his  own  way  of  thinking.  He  had  not  been 
one  of  the  originators  of  the  enterprise;  he  had  been  at 
Secretary  Addington's  elbow  when  that  lawyer  had  drawn 
up  the  church-control  plan  for  the  School's  founding  that 
Pierpont  had  refused;  he  was  away  from  Connecticut  during 
the  period  of  the  first  meetings  of  the  Trustees;  he  had 
waited  until  the  death  of  Pierpont  before  he  had  taken  an 
active  interest  in  the  School.  The  three-year  flurry  which 
he  now  caused  in  the  Collegiate  School's  life  was  undoubt- 
edly largely  for  the  best  of  reasons,  so  far  as  his  view  of 
them  was  concerned.  That  he  did  not  succeed  in  wrecking 
the  institution  was,  however,  due  to  no  fault  of  his,  but  to 
fortuitous  circumstances  of  another  and  quite  unexpected 
variety.  A  brief  review  of  the  Reverend  Woodbridge's 
efforts  to  side-track  the  Collegiate  School  to  Hartford,  cul- 
minating in  the  final  secure  establishment  of  the  institution 
at  New  Haven,  will  bring  us  out  into  the  last  and  most 
satisfactory  period  which  these  rambling  chronicles  of 
Yale's  early  days  have  described. 

V 

The  majority  vote  of  the  Trustees  to  settle  at  New 
Haven,  clinched  as  it  was  by  the  decision  to  build  the 
"College  house"  at  once,  had  appeared,  by  October,  17 16, 
to  end  the  Hartford  disaffection.  But  Woodbridge  and 
Buckingham  did  not  so  look  at  it.  Two  months  later  they 
were  behind  the  calling  of  a  Hartford  town  meeting,  at 
which  a  public  petition  was  drawn  up  ordering  the  Hartford 
Deputies  in  the  next  Assembly  to  oppose  the  New  Haven 
site  and  secure  action  which  should  locate  the  School  where 


The  Beginnings  at  New  Haven  337 

the  Assembly  desired.  This  decision  the  two  Hartford  min- 
isters no  doubt  expected  would  be  for  their  own  town.  The 
seacoast  Trustees  made  a  vigorous  reply  to  this  renewed 
petition.  This  was  written,  so  it  was  said,  by  Jonathan 
Law  of  Milford,  the  son-in-law  of  Rector  Andrew  and  later 
to  be  Governor  of  the  Colony.  It  argued  that  New  Haven, 
being  further  from  Massachusetts  (and  thus  Harvard) 
than  the  Connecticut  River  section,  was  the  best  location  in 
the  Colony  for  a  college  which  was  intended  to  serve  Con- 
necticut interests;  that  it  was  the  center  of  the  life  of  the 
Long  Island  coast  towns,  which  included  the  most  important 
villages  in  the  Colony,  and  that  New  Haven  had  offered 
the  largest  financial  support.  But  the  main  contention  of 
this  paper  by  Judge  Law  harked  back  to  the  fundamental 
theory  upon  which  the  Collegiate  School  had  been  estab- 
lished. This  was  a  characteristic  New  Haven  claim, — the 
independence  of  the  Trustees  from  Colony  legislative  inter- 
ference. We  have  seen  how  this  had  been  firmly  secured  by 
that  preliminary  informal  "founding"  at  Branford  by  the 
original  promoters  of  the  college  scheme.  We  have  seen 
how  the  senior  Trustees  had  applied  that  theory  by  refusing 
to  obey  the  summons  of  the  Assembly  committee  the  pre- 
vious year  to  bring  their  troubles  to  the  public  bar.  There 
was  to  come  a  time  when,  under  Rector  Clap,  this  principle 
was  to  be  the  storm-center  of  a  most  important  struggle 
between  the  College  and  the  Colony.  It  was  now  announced 
with  clearness  and  vigor.  The  Trustees,  this  statement 
said,  were  empowered  by  their  charter  to  decide  all  matters 
connected  with  the  School.  If  what  they  did  was  legally 
done  by  majority  vote,  the  General  Assembly  had  no  inter- 
est in  it,  and  certainly  had  no  business  championing  the 
minority  side. 

In  April,  17 17,  all  of  the  Trustees  but  Mather,  Wood- 
bridge,  and  Thomas  Buckingham  met  in  New  Haven  and 


338  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

chose  one  John  Prout,  a  recent  graduate  of  the  School  and 
"Naval  Officer"  for  the  New  Haven  port,  as  Treasurer  to 
succeed  Judge  Ailing  (who  had  died  just  after  he  had 
secured  the  New  Haven  money  offers  for  the  School) .  They 
now  reaffirmed  the  vote  to  build  the  new  "College  house" 
on  the  Coster  lot  whether  the  absent  Hartford  members 
lilced  it  or  not.  The  Coster  lot  had  now  been  purchased, 
the  ancient  Atwater  mansion  on  it  torn  down,  and  at  the 
New  Haven  faction  Commencement  in  September,  17 17,  the 
long  frame  of  the  new  house  had  been  raised  by  Caner, 
and  the  work  pushed  so  that  something  tangible  could  be 
shown  to  the  general  Assembly  at  its  October  meeting. 
Elisha  Williams,  now  beginning  that  public  career  which 
we  sketched  in  a  preceding  page,  was  a  deputy  from 
Wethersfield  to  this  General  Court,  and,  on  its  organization 
in  Rev.  Mr.  Noyes'  Meeting-house  on  the  New  Haven 
public  square,  became  its  clerk.  His  influence,  and  the 
lobbying  which  he  and  the  Hartford  Trustees  had  done 
among  the  magistrates  and  Deputies,  now  had  their  result. 
On  the  arrival  of  the  members  of  the  Assembly  in  New 
Haven  on  October  10,  17 17,  they  had  seen,  with  astonish- 
ment, the  rough  framework  of  the  new  Collegiate  School 
building  rising  skyward  through  the  oaks  and  elms  of  the 
upper  Market-place.  As  some  of  the  members  of  that 
Assembly  considered  that  the  site  of  the  School  had  not  yet 
been  legally  fixed  anywhere,  least  of  all  at  New  Haven,  I 
fancy  that  there  was  much  excitement  over  this  businesslike 
procedure  of  the  majority  of  the  Trustees,  and  some  heat 
as  well.  This  at  once  showed  itself  in  the  vote  of  both 
Houses,  taken  no  doubt  with  much  wrath  at  the  Meeting- 
house to  the  accompaniment  of  the  hammering  of  Caner's 
carpenters  across  the  Market-place,  that  the  Collegiate 
School  Trustees  should  immediately  appear  and  explain 
their  unexpected  and  outrageous  proceedings. 


kLJ 


340  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

This  peremptory  summons,  considering  the  state  of  mind 
of  the  General  Assembly,  could  hardly  be  neglected,  and  so 
the  seacoast  Trustees  girded  themselves  for  what  they 
proposed  to  be  their  final  fight  for  New  Haven.  All  but 
old  Samuel  Mather  and  the  latest  member,  Rev.  Stephen 
Buckingham  of  Norwalk,  attended  a  special  Trustees'  meet- 
ing called  for  this  purpose  just  as  the  Assembly  was  ad- 
journing. It  must  have  been  a  spicy  session,  for  both 
Woodbridge  and  Thomas  Buckingham  were  there,  and  John 
Davenport  rode  over  from  Stamford,  armed,  as  the  saying 
goes,  for  the  fray.  No  doubt  the  great  periwigs  of  these 
reverend  Trustees  shook  with  the  heat  of  this  final  trial  of 
strength  between  the  warring  factions,  and  their  ministerial 
black  silk  gowns  fluttered  vigorously  as  Trustee  after 
Trustee  stood  up  (perhaps  in  Captain  Miles'  upper  room) 
and  carried  on  the  battle.  The  result  was  to  be  expected. 
A  majority  and  a  minority  report  were  drawn  up.  The 
first,  signed  by  James  Noyes  (who  drew  it) ,  Rector  Andrew, 
Russel,  Webb,  Davenport,  and  Ruggles,  stood  emphatically 
for  New  Haven.  The  minority  paper,  which,  as  "Some 
Observations,"  was  presented  the  next  day,  was  signed  by 
Woodbridge  and  Thomas  Buckingham,  and  counted  in 
Stephen  Buckingham  (who  was  not  present),  the  bedridden 
Samuel  Mather,  and  Moses  Noyes.  To  the  claim  of  the 
majority  that  the  legislature  had  no  legal  right  to  interfere 
in  a  question  settled  by  a  majority  of  the  Trustees,  this 
Hartford  answer  was  that  it  had  not  been  settled  by  a 
majority,  Thomas  Ruggles  of  Guilford  having  been  ille- 
gally elected  a  Trustee  when  he  was  under  the  minimum  age 
of  forty.  By  counting  Ruggles  out  (a  highly  specious  bit  of 
reasoning,  as  the  Hartford  Trustees  had  never  raised  the 
point  before,  and  had  voted  at  meetings  at  which  Ruggles 
had  been  present),  and  counting  on  their  side  two  Trustees 


The  Beginnings  at  New  Haven  341 

who  had  not  been  present,  the  attempt  was  made  to  show 
that  there  had  been  no  such  majority. 

It  was  at  this  somewhat  critical  juncture  that  Governor 
Saltonstall  again  stepped  into  the  breach  and  used  his 
influence  to  solve  the  mooted  question.  The  Lower  House, 
indeed,  voted  that  the  School  should  at  once  be  set  up  at 
Middletown  (evidently  an  effort  at  a  compromise).  But 
the  Upper  House,  led  by  Governor  Saltonstall,  took  the 
ground  that  the  site  question  was  not  one  for  the  Assembly 
to  settle  at  all,  and  that  Jonathan  Law's  argument  that  the 
Trustees  alone  had  that  power,  was  a  sound  one.  And  so 
the  heated  controversy  cooled  down  once  more,  with  the 
honors  still  on  the  side  of  the  New  Haven  faction.  But  it 
at  once  flared  up  again,  the  Assembly  still  in  session,  owing 
to  the  presentation  of  an  exhaustive  and  decidedly  aggres- 
sive paper  by  the  New  Haven-site  Trustees,  replying  to  the 
"Observations"  of  the  two  Hartford  members.  The  attack 
on  the  actions  of  the  Hartford  Trustees,  in  this  paper,  was 
made  with  much  vigor.  The  upshot  was  a  special  hearing 
set  for  both  sides  by  the  Assembly. 

This  final  act  in  the  long  drawn-out  controversy  was 
described  at  the  time  by  young  Samuel  Johnson,  who  had  dis- 
missed his  classes  for  the  day  and  gone  over  to  the  Meeting- 
house to  see  what  happened.  Governor  Saltonstall,  accord- 
ing to  Sir  Johnson,  led  off  the  business  by  a  speech  from 
James  Pierpont's  old  pulpit,  in  which  he  told  of  "his  sorrow 
to  see  the  difference,"  and  defined  the  method  of  procedure 
at  this  public  meeting,  which  he  hoped  would  definitely 
settle  the  question.  The  Rev.  John  Davenport,  speaking 
for  the  "Seaside  Trustees,"  then  narrated  the  history  of  the 
whole  imbroglio,  "and  vindicated  the  same,  showing  likewise 
the  irregular  and  factious  management  up  the  River,  and 
specially  of  the  petition  proffered  to  the  General  Court"  by 
Woodbridge   and  Thomas   Buckingham   the   year   before. 


342  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

which  had  brought  on  all  the  trouble.  I  fancy  that  John 
Davenport  used  all  of  his  colony-wide  famous  pulpit  power 
in  this  presentation  of  the  majority's  case,  and  that  he 
stirred  matters  up  considerably.  Timothy  Woodbridge, 
suave  and  polite,  but  no  doubt  fired  with  more  than  his  usual 
energy,  replied,  supporting  "what  they  had  done  up  the 
River."  Davenport  answered  this  with  much  strength  of 
statement,  and  carried  the  day.  "And  so  the  dispute 
ended,"  writes  the  reporter  Johnson.  There  was  some 
argument  by  a  Deputy  or  two  that  the  charter  called  for 
unanimous  action  in  such  a  matter,  but  this  was  refuted  by 
Davenport  and  made  the  small  impression  it  probably  de- 
served. "The  Upper  House,"  says  Johnson,  "all  as  one 
man  agreed  that  they  would  advise  the  Trustees  settling  the 
School  at  New  Haven  to  go  on  with  it,  esteeming  their  cause 
just  and  good,  and  they  sent  it  down  to  the  Lower  House, 
where  there  was  great  throes  and  pangs  and  controversies 
and  mighty  strugglings;  at  length  they  put  it  to  a  vote  and 
there  were  [36  to  30]  for  the  side  of  New  Haven." 

"And  thus  at  length,"  proceeds  Tutor  Johnson,  "the  up- 
river  party  had  their  will,  in  having  the  School  settled  by 
the  General  Court,  though  sorely  against  their  will,  at  New 
Haven,  but  many  owned  themselves  fairly  beat." 

But  the  end  was  not  yet.  When  the  Assembly  met  at 
Hartford  the  following  May  (1718)  Woodbridge  again 
broached  the  subject.  The  Lower  House,  which  throughout 
these  proceedings  appears  to  have  reflected  the  popular 
opinion  perhaps  more  than  the  Upper  House  and  Salton- 
stall,  "considering  the  great  dissatisfaction  of  the  country  in 
general,"  voted  to  divide  the  annual  £200  Colony  grant  for 
the  support  of  the  Tutors  between  those  "at  Wethersfield, 
Saybrook,  and  New  Haven,  according  to  the  proportion  of 
scholars  under  their  tuition."  Saltonstall  saw  to  it,  however, 
that  this  highly  unfortunate  bill  was  not  passed  by  the  Upper 


The  Beginnings  at  New  Haven  343 

House,  and  the  New  Haven  faction  was  thus  again  left  to 
carry  on  the  School  as  it  saw  fit. 

But  the  Wethersfield  school  was  still,  somehow  or  other, 
maintained  (probably  by  the  tuition  of  the  fourteen  scholars 
still  at  Elisha  Williams'  farmhouse)  and  what  was  left  of 
the  Collegiate  School  went  about  its  regular  daily  business  in 
New  Haven  under  Tutors  Samuel  Johnson  and  Daniel 
Browne,  the  Seniors  going  to  Rev.  Joseph  Noyes  for  in- 
struction, and  Rector  Andrew  riding  over  from  Milford  for 
Commencements.  It  no  doubt  seemed  to  those  playing  their 
parts  at  this  juncture,  that  this  situation  was  lilcely  to  prove 
a  permanent  one,  and  that,  unless  something  unexpected 
happened,  there  would  be  two  Collegiate  Schools  in  the 
Colony,  one  at  New  Haven,  supported  by  the  Governor  and 
magistrates  and  with  the  School  funds  and  building  now 
all  but  erected, — the  other  at  Wethersfield,  under  a  rival 
group  of  tutors,  supported  by  the  evidently  irreconcilable 
Hartford  Trustees  and  the  House  of  Deputies. 


%A.  2^coue/vfyoz^ — 


CHAPTER  VIII 

"YALE  COLLEGE"  AT  NEW  HAVEN 

I 

UT  more  funds  were  needed,  if  the 
college  house  and  the  proposed  Presi- 
dent's house  were  to  be  paid  for  and 
finished,  and  so,  late  in  October,  17 17, 
the  successful  New  Haven  party  among 
the  Trustees  immediately  set  about  dis- 
covering some  way  in  which  they  might 
advance  the  financial  interests  of  the 
academy,  now  that  they  had  carried  their  point  as  to  its 
site. 

The  only  place  to  look  for  this  help  was  apparently  again 
in  England.  And  among  the  possible  English  friends  of  the 
School  old  Governor  Elihu  Yale  still  loomed  as  the  most 
promising,  as  his  uncle,  Edward  Hopkins,  had  to  John 
Davenport  just  sixty  years  before.  A  letter  was  now  dis- 
patched to  the  crusty  old  gentleman,  a  manuscript  draft  of 
which  is  still  among  the  University  papers.  This  is  worth 
quoting.  "The  affair  of  our  School,"  says  this  quaint  docu- 
ment, "hath  been  in  a  Condition  of  Pregnancy:  Painfull 
with  a  witness  have  been  the  Throwes  therof  in  this  General 
Assembly;  But  We  just  now  hear,  that  after  the  Violent 
Pangs  threatening  the  Very  life  of  the  Babe,  Divine  Provi- 
dence as  a  kind  Obstetrix  hath  mercifully  brought  the  Babe 
into  the  World,  &  behold  A  Man-child  is  born,  whereat  We 
all  Rejoyce."     This  scriptural-obstetrical  epistle  no  doubt 


"Yale  College"  at  New  Haven  345 

finally  reached  Elihu  Yale  In  London  and  astonished  him 
greatly. 

Jeremiah  Dummer  was  still  the  Colony  agent  in  London 
at  this  time,^and  still  a  prominent  figure,  if  his  activities  did 
not  entirely  commend  themselves  to  some  of  the  more 
snobbish  of  the  London  fashionables.  Negotiations  were 
therefore  again  opened  with  this  indefatigable  gentleman. 
The  Trustees  send  him  a  letter  of  thanks  for  his  book  col- 
lection. In  this  they  take  occasion  to  report  progress  as  they 
had  to  Governor  Yale.  "We  are  in  hopes  of  having  shortly 
perfected  a  splendid  Collegiate  House,"  they  write,  "which 
was  raised  on  the  nth  instant.  We  behold  its  fair  aspect 
[evidently  not  all  of  the  poetical  flights  of  the  day  were 
monopolized  by  Wigglesworth  or  Nicholas  Noyes],  in  the 
Market-place  of  New  Haven,  mounted  in  an  eminent  place 
thereof,  in  length  ten  rods,  in  breadth  twenty-one  feet,  and 
near  thirty  feet  upright,  a  spacious  hall,  and  an  equally 
spacious  library,  all  in  a  little  time  to  be  splendidly  com- 
pleted." This  rhetorical  outburst  duly  arrived  at  Dummer's 
London  lodgings^  and,  suggesting  as  it  did  further  efforts  to 
raise  money  on  the  part  of  the  Colony  agent,  had,  as  we  shall 
see.  Its  immediate  effect  upon  Elihu  Yale,  already  in  receipt 
of  a  special  and  equally  flowery  letter  of  his  own. 

But  other  agencies  were  likewise  at  work  for  the  School 
in  this  connection.     Our  old  acquaintance,  the  Rev.  Cotton 

1  Dummer  writes  in  reply  to  a  letter,  in  February,  1717,  that  he  is  "sorry 
I  cannot  yet  Send  you  the  rest  of  the  books  with  the  Catalogue,  but  I  hope 
to  do  it  by  the  fall,  having  a  promise  of  Several  large  benefactions  not  yet 
come  in."  He  adds  that  he  would  like  to  have  "some  Oration  at  your 
Commencement  take  notice  of  what  Books  you  have  already  receiv'd  (I 
mean  in  General  words)  &  acknowledge  your  obligations  to  yor  Friends 
here,  &  that  then  a  proper  paragraph  of  it  might  be  prepar'd  for  the  Boston 
Gazett,  &  the  Gazett  sent  over  to  me.  I  could  perhaps  make  use  of  this 
contrivance  to  the  great  advantage  of  the  CoUegd,  besides  it  is  a  necessary 
peice  of  gratitude  in  you,  &  as  requisite  for  my  acquittal."  I  do  not  know 
that  this  "proper"  acknowledgment  ever  appeared  in  the  Boston  papers. 


346  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

Mather  of  Boston,  was  now  again  in  a  hostile  state  of  mind 
toward  Harvard  College,  this  time  largely  because  John 
Leverett  had  been  elected  President  instead  of  himself,  and 
because  the  progressive  Leverett  was  introducing  supporters 
of  the  new  theology  into  Harvard's  councils.  Cotton 
Mather  had  for  these  reasons  peevishly  been  staying  away 
from  meetings  of  the  Harvard  Corporation  for  some  time, 
and  was  now  entirely  out  of  sympathy  with  that  institution 
and  (if  we  may  believe  President  Quincy)  very  much  alive 
again  to  the  possibilities  of  the  Connecticut  Collegiate  School 
taking  Harvard's  place  as  the  orthodox  New  England 
college. 

While  Cotton  Mather's  renewed  interest  in  the  Connecti- 
cut college's  affairs  was  to  be  a  considerable  factor  in  the 
unexpected  turn  which  matters  were  shortly  to  take  in  its 
fortunes,  it  was  natural  enough.  To  such  adherents  of  the 
old  New  England  Congregationalism  as  the  Mathers,  the 
steady  progress  of  Harvard  College,  through  Increase 
Mather's  final  years  and  Vice-President  Willard's  and  now 
John  Leverett's,  had  been  toward  an  intellectual  and  reli- 
gious emancipation  which  spelled  only  one  thing  to  the  old 
order.  We  have  seen  how  the  two  Mathers  had  interested 
themselves  in  the  Collegiate  School's  beginnings.  The 
establishment  of  the  Connecticut  school,  however  different 
it  was  from  the  Mathers'  suggestions,  had  undoubtedly 
resulted  in  one  satisfactory  thing,  to  men  of  their  way  of 
thinking.  It  had  very  decidedly  resulted  in  keeping  Con- 
necticut to  the  traditional  and  conservative  paths  that  their 
own  Massachusetts  was  forsaking.  Placed  by  its  charter  in 
the  hands  of  a  self-perpetuating  body  of  Connecticut  minis- 
ters of  their  own  and  the  old  Massachusetts  sort,  the  Col- 
legiate School  had  been  set  back  still  further  into  the  old 
order  by  the  adoption  in  the  Saybrook  Platform  of  that 
Colony    Congregational    creed    and    organization    which 


"Yale  College"  at  New  Haven  347 

Massachusetts  had  failed  to  get.  So  that,  with  President 
Leverett  developing  Harvard  by  17 18  along  new  and,  to 
Cotton  Mather,  highly  dangerous  lines,  it  was  natural  that 
the  latter  should  again  have  turned  to  Connecticut  and 
interested  himself  in  its  School's  welfare.  Writing  in  that 
voluminous  diary  in  which  he  recorded  his  religious  experi- 
ences. Cotton  Mather  unburdened  himself  as  follows: 
"What  shall  I  do  for  the  welfare  of  this  College  at  New 
Haven?  I  am  inclinable  to  write  unto  a  wealthy  East-India 
merchant  at  London,  who  may  be  disposed  on  Several 
Accounts  to  do  for  that  Society  and  Colony."  This  he  now 
did.  For  we  find  the  Rev.  Cotton  Mather  suddenly  taking 
it  upon  himself  to  write  to  Elihu  Yale  (he  maintained  a 
large  correspondence  with  English  leaders  concerning 
many  New  England  matters),  suggesting  still  further  gen- 
erosity. After  one  of  his  most  verbose  and  rhetorical 
flights.  Cotton  Mather  proceeds  to  inform  Governor  Yale 
that  "New  England  is  now  so  far  improved  as  to  have  the 
best  part  of  two  hundred  meeting-houses."  The  spiritual 
state  of  the  congregations  of  these  Meeting-houses  is  there- 
upon parenthetically  prayed  for  at  his  usual  length  by 
Mather,  who  then  leads  up  through  that  channel  (the  pre- 
vious career  of  Governor  Yale  to  the  contrary  notwith- 
standing) to  urge  upon  the  great  London  merchant  "his 
serious  regard  unto  the  account  which  we  are  to  give  of  our 
stewardship."  And  then,  no  doubt  to  Elihu  Yale's  surprise, 
Mather  applies  all  of  this  argument,  not  to  a  money  gift  to 
that  Harvard  College  of  which  the  writer  was  a  Fellow, 
but  to  the  little  Collegiate  School  at  New  Haven  with  which 
he  had  no  ofiicial  connection  whatever.  "You  have,  sir," 
says  Mather,  in  his  best  style,  "been  most  kindly  inquisitive 
what  you  may  do  for  such  a  people.  .  .  .  The  Colony  of 
Connecticut,  having  for  some  years  had  a  College  at  Say- 
brook  without  a  collegious  way  of  living  for  it,  have  lately 


348  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

begun  to  erect  a  large  edifice  for  it  in  the  town  of  New 
Haven.  The  charge  of  that  expensive  building  is  not  yet 
all  paid  [evidently  Mather  knew  intimately  of  the  condi- 
tions there],  nor  are  there  yet  funds  of  revenues  for  salaries 
to  the  Professors  and  Instructors  to  the  society.  Sir,  though 
you  have  your  felicities  in  your  family,  which  I  pray  God 
continue  and  multiply,  yet  certainly,  if  what  is  forming  at 
New  Haven  might  wear  the  name  of  Yale  College,  it  would 
be  better  than  a  name  of  sons  and  daughters.  And  your 
munificence  might  easily  obtain  for  you  such  a  commemora- 
tion and  perpetuation  of  your  valuable  name,  which  would 
indeed  be  much  better  than  an  Egyptian  pyramid." 

This  epistle  was  an  extraordinary  one,  when  it  is  remem- 
bered that  the  Trustees  of  the  Collegiate  School,  so  far  as 
we  know,  had  given  its  writer  no  authority  to  go  to  Elihu 
Yale,  and  certainly  none  to  concoct  a  name  for  it  on  his 
own  account  at  Boston.  Mather  (who  was  little  given  to 
worrying  about  his  own  errors)  himself  probably  realized 
this.  In  writing  to  Governor  Saltonstall  a  little  later,  he 
refers  to  the  matter  in  saying,  "I  confess,  that  it  was  a  great 
and  inexcusable  presumption  in  me,  to  make  myself  so  far 
the  godfather  of  the  beloved  infant  as  to  propose  a  name 
for  it.  But  I  assured  myself,  that  if  a  succession  of  solid 
and  lasting  benefits  might  be  entailed  upon  it  your  Honor 
and  the  Honorable  Trustees  would  pardon  me,  and  the 
proposal  would  be  complied  withal.  It  is  a  thousand  pities 
[he  adds]  that  the  dear  infant  should  be  in  danger  of  being 
strangled  in  the  birth,  by  a  dissension  of  your  good  people 
about  the  place  where  it  shall  be  nourished  in  the  wilderness. 
But  probably  the  Yalean  assistance  to  New  Haven  will 
prove  a  decisive  circumstance,  which  will  dispose  all  to  an 
acquiescence  there." 

While  the  real  piety  of  most  of  the  people  of  that  day 
can  hardly  be  denied, — certainly  the  almost  fanatical  reli- 


"Yale  College"  at  New  Haven  349 

gious  fervor  of  Cotton  Mather  cannot  be, — I  imagine  that 
it  was  more  or  less  a  fashionable  affectation  with  many 
others,  just  as,  a  generation  later,  it  was  fashionable  to  be 
anything  but  pious.  Cotton  Mather's  sincere  piety  was  well 
established,  but  I  do  not  suppose  that  the  Yalean  was.  And 
so  Cotton  Mather  had  used  the  fashionable  literary  plea 
of  the  times  with  the  great  London  capitalist,  that  it  would 
not  "be  any  disadvantage  upon  your  person  or  family,  for 
a  good  people  to  malce  mention  of  you  in  their  prayers  unto 
the  glorious  Lord,  as  one  who  has  loved  their  nation,  ind 
supported  and  strengthened  the  seminary  from  whence  they 
expect  the  supply  of  their  synagogues."  Mather  then  com- 
mitted the  soul  of  Governor  Yale  to  the  tender  mercies  of 
Jeremiah  Dummer,  "an  excellent  friend,  our  agent,  who  has 
been  a  tender,  prudent,  active,  and  useful  patron  of  the 
infant  College  at  Connecticut,"  as  in  truth  he  had  been. 
Dummer,  he  suggests,  will  wait  upon  Mr.  Yale  at  his  pala- 
tial house  in  Great  Ormond  Street,  and  take  anything  that 
he  would  be  willing  to  give,  in  order  to  have  the  first  build- 
ing of  the  "dear  infant"  Collegiate  School  baptized  with  his 
name. 

Dummer,  with  a  redoubled  burst  of  his  extraordinary 
energy,  promptly  undertook  this  renewed  attack  on  the 
coffers  of  Governor  Yale.  Yet  he  seems  to  have  had  special 
reason  for  this  loyalty  to  the  Collegiate  School.  Though 
still  the  Massachusetts  Colony  agent,  he  had  recently  been 
displaced  by  one  Henry  Newman  as  the  Harvard  College 
London  representative.  It 
was  possibly  for  that  rea- 
son that  Dummer  was 
shortly  to  be  found  contriving  to  divert  gifts  from  Harvard 
to  the  Connecticut  School  on  his  own  account,  though  Presi- 
dent Quincy  suspiciously  suggests  that  Cotton  Mather  was 
behind  him  in  that  effort  also.     Thomas  Hollis  of  London 


350  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

was  then  beginning  his  great  benefactions  to  Harvard,  and 
letters  from  him  to  one  of  the  Harvard  Fellows  at  this 
period  show  that  Dummer  tried  hard  to  get  him  to  shift 
his  interest  to  the  Collegiate  School  of  Connecticut.  Gover- 
nor Saltonstall  himself  sent  letters  through  Dummer  to 
Hollis  for  this  purpose,  as,  Indeed,  he  had  a  good  right  to 
do.  But  references  by  Hollis  to  some  anonymous  Boston 
adviser  of  this  course  led  QuIncy  to  the  possibly  correct 
notion  that  this  "underhanded"  person  was  none  other  than 
our  good  friend  Cotton  Mather  again.  Be  that  as  it  may, 
the  scheme  fell  through,  and  Harvard  properly  counts  the 
Hollis  family  gifts,  dating  from  this  time,  among  its  greatest 
early  donations. 

II 

Though  the  Wethersfield  school  was  in  full  operation 
during  the  summer  of  171 8,  in  spite  of  the  Assembly's  deci- 
sion to  let  the  majority  Trustees  have  their  way,  the  New 
Haven  party  had  steadily  proceeded  with  the  building  of 
the  new  "College  house"  on  the  Coster  lot,  and,  just  before 
Commencement  In  September  of  that  year,  were  completing 
It,  Governor  Saltonstall  looking  in  now  and  then  on  its 
architechtonick  side  from  his  home  in  East  Haven. 

Yet  that  situation  was  still  far  from  satisfactory.  The 
Hartford  faction  showed  no  inclinations  whatever  to  drop 
their  claim  on  the  School.  The  Wethersfield  scholars  had 
not  responded  to  repeated  invitations  to  join  the  regular 
classes  under  Samuel  Johnson  and  the  ministers,  Noyes  and 
Moss,  at  New  Haven.  Nor  was  there  quite  enough  money 
In  hand  with  which  to  pay  the  contractor  for  the  new  build- 
ing. The  possibility  was  a  good  one  that  It  could  not  be 
finished  at  all  without  help.  It  was  for  this  last  reason  that 
Dummer  had  received  urgent  requests  to  push  Governor 
Yale's  Inclinations  as  hard  as  he  properly  could. 


"Yale  College"  at  New  Haven  351 

That  great  man  had  meantime  read  (doubtless  with  much 
amusement)  the  fulsome  letter  of  Cotton  Mather,  and  the 
physiological  description  of  the  Collegiate  School's  begin- 
nings that  had  been  forwarded  by  the  Trustees.  We  may 
fancy  that  Mather's  suggestion  that  Yale's  name  would  be 
given  to  the  new  "College  house"  had  appealed  to  him, 
whether  the  prospect  of  prayers  for  his  soul  had  or  not. 
Yet  it  was  a  small  matter  at  the  most  to  the  great  man. 
Thomas  Hollis  wrote  that  he  himself  had  never  heard 
of  the  New  Haven  institution,  and,  though  it  had  of  course 
been  pressed  on  the  attention  of  the  bigwigs  of  London  by 
Jeremiah  Dummer  but  a  few  years  previously,  I  suppose 
that  most  of  them  had  by  this  time  forgotten  about  it.  To 
Elihu  Yale  it  was  so  small  an  affair  that  it  was  likely  enough 
that  he  had  never  thought  of  it  between  Dummer's  calls,  and 
that  it  was  in  quite  an  offhand  way  that  he  had  finally  lent 
an  ear  to  that  agent's  persistent  arguments,  and  agreed  to 
help  it. 

Compared  to  his  reputed  wealth,  the  gift  that  Elihu  Yale 
now  made  to  Dummer  was  extremely  small.  We  do 
not  know  the  precise  value  of  Yale's  estate  at  this  time; 
but  one  of  his  three  daughters  left  some  £20,000  years  later, 
so  that  it  must  have  been  considerable.  To  Dummer,  within 
three  or  four  months  after  he  had  received  the  Mather 
letter,  Governor  Yale  finally  gave  goods  estimated  by  him 
at  £800  in  value.  These,  shipped  in  three  great  bales  from 
London  in  June,  17 18,  and  arriving  at  Boston  in  due  season 
in  the  care  of  former  Lieutenant  Governor  Tailor,  were 
found  to  consist  of  an  odd  assortment  of  wares,  readily, 
however,  turned  into  hard  cash  in  the  Boston  market.  Part 
of  this  consignment  contained  "25  pieces  of  garlix,  18 
pieces  of  calico,  17  pieces  of  stuff  (worsted  goods),  12 
pieces  Spanish  poplin,  5  pieces  plain  muslin,  3  pieces  camlot, 
and  2  of  black  and  white  silk  crape"  (out  of  the  black  crepe 


352 


The  Beginnings  of  Yale 


were  made  the  customary  scholars'  and  ministers'  gowns  of 
the  time).  The  whole  lot  was  within  the  next  three  years 
sold  for  a  total  sum  of  £562  12s.  sterling,  the  largest  pri- 
vate donation  to  the  College  for  the  next  hundred  years 
and  over. 

The  news  of  this  gift,  of  the  greatest  possible  importance 
to  the  Collegiate  School  Trustees  at  this  particular  moment, 
happily  reached  New  Haven  just  before  the  September 
Commencement  of  171 8.    Dame  Fortune's  face  had  turned. 


"Yale  College"  at  New  Haven  353 

If  Governor  Yale  could  have  been  present  to  understand 
the  value  of  his  contribution  to  the  provincial  school,  he 
might  easily  have  come  to  a  new  realization  of  the  compara- 
tive importance  of  things  on  this  mundane  sphere.  For 
what  was  next  to  nothing  to  him,  living  in  his  plundered 
splendor  in  his  great  London  house,  was  everything  to  the 
struggling  academy  in  far-off  and  primitive  New  Haven. 
For  these  Trustees,  the  last  of  the  money  needed  with  which 
to  pay  for  the  new  "College  house"  was  now  all  but  in 
hand.  The  Yale  gift  marked  the  successful  end  of  all  their 
efforts  and  of  those  who  had  stood  by  them  and  who  had 
supported  the  New  Haven  establishment. 

Immediately  after  the  receipt  of  the  news  of  this  gift,  the 
Commencement  Trustees'  meeting  was  held  for  the  first 
time  in  the  new  "College  hall,"  now  all  but  completed. 

Ill 

This  great  college  house,  which  until  now  we  have 
merely  seen  as  it  was  building,  was  an  extraordinary  struc- 
ture. Standing  on  the  ancient  Atwater  lot  of  John  Daven- 
port's Colony  days,  it  had  been  erected  about  where  Osborn 
Hall  now  stands,  fifty  feet  from  College  and  thirty-four 
from  Chapel  Streets,  facing  the  former.  It  was  a  much 
elongated  and  pinched-together  edifice,  165  feet  on  the  pres- 
ent College  Street  by  22  on  Chapel.^     It  was  three  stories 

IDurfee  Hall  is  181  feet  by  40;  South  Middle  (now  Connecticut  Hall) 
105  by  40;  Old  South  was  100  by  40,  while  North  Middle  and  Old  North 
were  about  the  size  of  South  Middle.  The  depth  of  this  first  Yale  College 
building,  22  feet,  while  so  given  by  President  Clap,  would  appear  to  be 
underestimated,  were  it  not  for  the  fact  that  the  Trustees  so  gave  it  in  their 
letter  to  Dummer  later  on.  The  drawing  by  Mr.  Diedricksen  of  this  building 
follows  these  dimensions  and  produces  an  entirely  different  looking  structure 
from  the  traditional  Greenwood  engraving,  which  was  entirely  out  of 
drawing  and  with  incorrect  proportions,  though  probably  based  on  correct 
items. 


"Yale  College"  at  New  Haven  355 

high,  with  "50  Studies  in  convenient  Chambers,"  and  had 
a  kitchen  ell  on  the  ground  floor  on  Chapel  Street.  It  was 
built  entirely  of  wood,  and,  on  the  Wadsworth  New  Haven 
map  of  1748,  appears  to  have  been  painted  blue,  as  were 
many  of  the  village  houses  by  that  time.  James  Buck,  book- 
seller, "at  ye  Spectacles"  in  Queen  Street,  Boston,  had  a 
plate  drawn  by  one  J.  Greenwood  and  engraved  by  T.  John- 
ston, of  this  first  Yale  building,  some  twenty-five  or  more 
years  later.  I  imagine  that  this  ancient  drawing  will  have  to 
be  taken  with  some  salt,  unless  Governor  Saltonstall's 
"architechtonick"  gifts  were  of  a  much  lower  order  than  his 
Harvard  contemporaries'.  For  the  three  Harvard  buildings 
of  the  same  date,  forming  three  sides  of  a  court  that  was 
open  to  the  country  Cambridge  roadway,  were  much  more 
attractive,  if  we  may  believe  the  representations  of  them 
that  have  come  down  to  us. 

Yet  this  ungainly  structure  may  not  have  been  as  barrack- 
like in  its  actual  appearance  in  171 8  as  its  extraordinary 
dimensions  would  indicate.  A  returning  graduate,  in  1787, 
Professor  Dexter  finds,  bemoaned  the  razing  of  this  build- 
ing, saying  that  it  "was  by  far  the  most  sightly  building  of 
any  one  that  belonged  to  the  University,  and  most  advan- 
tageously situated.  It  gave  an  air  of  grandeur  to  the 
others."  These  "others"  were  of  course  what  is  now 
"Connecticut  Hall,"  built  in  1752,  the  Athenaeum,  built  in 
1761,  and  the  Commons  (later  the  Chemical  Laboratory), 
built  in  1782.  A  correct  representation  of  it  suggests  that 
it  may  well  have  been  all  that  Manasseh  Cutler  said  for  it 
in  1787.  Taking  the  ground  floor  as  a  type  of  the  three 
stories,  there  was,  at  the  south  end,  a  thirty-one-foot  "Hall," 
used  as  a  dining-room  and  for  a  time  as  a  chapel.  Next 
north  came  a  nine-foot  entry  for  the  staircases.  Then  came 
two  suites  of  studies  and  bedrooms,  each  suite  twenty-one 
feet  long.    Then  came  another  entry,  and  two  more  suites. 


356  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

The  third  entry  and  a  single  twenty-one- foot  suite  ended 
the  structure  on  the  north.  Judging  from  the  building  direc- 
tions, there  must  have  been  a  considerable  "over-hang"  to 
the  sharply  pitched  roof.  While  there  exists  no  floor  plan 
of  this  elongated  structure,  we  should  be  able  to  tell  pretty 
accurately  how  the  rooms  were  laid  out.  President  Clap, 
who  was  an  indefatigable  note-taker  on  everything  about 
him,  kept  a  student-room  account  book  when  he  was  presi- 
dent. Therein,  on  rough  sketches  of  the  College  House 
elevation,  he  would  jot  down  the  names  of  aspirants  for 
rooms  at  the  next  college  opening,  and  record  the  allotments 
when  made.  In  October,  1746,  he  made  such  a  sketch. 
Including  the  attics,  he  shows  twenty-two  suites,  each  twenty- 
one  or  -two  feet  wide  on  the  front  of  the  building.  The 
names  of  from  one  to  four  students  are  set  down  in  these 
spaces  on  Clap's  plan.  In  addition,  he  writes  names  in  the 
stair-entry  spaces  over  each  of  the  three  ground-floor 
doorways, — hall  bedrooms  for  single  roomers.  So  that 
over  sixty  scholars  could  be  accommodated  in  the  building. 
The  administrative  life  of  the  College  centered  about  the 
"Hall"  and  Library  at  the  south  end.  These  were  fairly 
large  rooms,  with  fireplaces  at  the  outer  sides.  The  Trus- 
tees met  in  the  Library  on  the  second  floor. 

This  large  room,  the  rest  of  the  structure  not  being  com- 
pleted, was  now  thrown  open  to  the  Governor  and  the 
Upper  House  for  the  formal  dedication  of  the  building. 


IV 


And,  properly  enough,  this  was  a  gala  occasion.  Colonel 
Tailor  rode  down  from  Boston  with  a  retinue  to  attend  it. 
Governor  Gurdon  Saltonstall  "and  his  Lady,"  the  Deputy 
Governor,  and  all  the  Superior  Court  judges  were  there. 


"Yale  College"  at  New  Haven  357 

while  the  Colony  leaders  who  were  in  sympathy  with  the 
New  Haven  location  doubtless  also  attended. 

The  scene,  provincial  as  it  might  have  seemed  to  the  so- 
phisticated former  Boston  Lieutenant  Governor,  must  have 
been  a  splendid  one  for  New  Haven,  thus  attended  by  the 
dignitaries  and  great  folk  of  the  Colony.  For  the  Puritan 
garb  of  the  Connecticut  people  long  since  had  passed  away. 
The  ministers  still  wore  their  white  bands  and  black  gowns, 
their  black  coats  and  smallclothes  and  stockings.  But  the 
gentry  had  by  this  time  come  to  dress  according  to  the 
fashionable  epoch  of  the  mid-i8th  Century  of  Old  England. 
Gold  cords  were  on  the  gentlemen's  hats;  their  waistcoats 
were  creations  of  embroidery  and  colored  stuffs;  their 
square-cut  coats  were  even  decorated  with  "frogs"  of  gold 
and  silver  and  brocades.  Their  powdered  periwigs  and 
perukes  were,  in  some  cases,  of  enormous  size.  Their 
great  cuffs  ended  in  ruffles,  and  their  silk  stockings  were  of 
many  hues.  The  Colony  gentlewomen  were  quite  as  re- 
splendent in  their  periwigs  and  mantles,  drawn  open  to  show 
the  charming  hooped-petticoat  modes  of  London  and  Bos- 
ton. The  gay  attire  of  these  good  folk  must  have  lent  much 
color  to  the  occasion. 

Samuel  Johnson,  still  Tutor  of  the  School,  has  left  us  a 
vivid  account  of  these  proceedings.  The  first  business  of 
this  famous  Commencement  was  the  formal  dedication  of 
the  new  College  house.  At  this  ceremony,  following 
Cotton  Mather's  voluntary  suggestion  to  the  great  man,  the 
Trustees  now  formally  named  the  new  building  "Yale 
College,"  and  a  unanimous  and  probably  most  enthusiastic 
vote  was  proposed  and  passed,  that  "Our  Collegiate  School" 
itself  be  "named  Yale-College." 

And  then  the  formal  amenities  of  the  occasion  begin. 
Colonel  Tailor,  in  the  prevailingly  elegant  attire  of  fashion- 
able Boston,  addresses  the  black-gowned  Trustees  and  re- 


358  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

splendently-attired  Magistrates  with  a  fine  speech,  in  which 
he  expresses,  for  the  absent  donor,  his  great  satisfaction  in 

giving  his  little  "for  the  per- 

A     V^^y^jC"^      j^  fecting  and  adorning"  of  the 

oijkj  _^  ix^  \^i      ^    truly  remarkable  building  in 

which  they  are  met,  etc. 
These  great  events  over,  the  whole  Assembly  marches 
to  the  square  Meeting-house  in  the  center  of  the  public 
square  (much  as  Yale  Commencement  processions  did  for 
over  a  century  later,  and  as,  passing  around  the  modern 
successor  of  that  early  New  Haven  church,  to  their  own 
hall,  they  do  today),  and  there  the  first  Commencement  of 
'Yale  College"  is  held.  There  is  a  prayer,  and  then  a  Latin 
Oration  "by  the  Saluting  Orator,"  young  James  Pierpont, 
son  of  that  promoter  of  the  college  plan  who  was  first  to 
bring  it  to  Elihu  Yale's  august  attention.  The  usual  lengthy 
Latin  "Dissertations"  are  given  by  the  graduating  Seniors 
in  their  black  gowns.  Then  the  Rev.  John  Davenport, 
grandson  of  the  pioneer  whose  life  work  for  the  Colony 
college  had,  unknown  to  him,  paved  the  way  for  the  present 
great  occasion,  makes  a  most  polished  and  splendid  "ora- 
tion in  Latin,"  in  which  he  expresses,  in  the  language  of  the 
cultivated  men  of  his  day,  the  thanks  of  the  Trustees  "to 
Almighty  God  and  Mr.  Yale  under  Him  for  so  public  a 
favor  and  so  great  a  regard  to  our  languishing  School"  [as 
Tutor  Johnson  duly  translates  it].  Then  diplomas  are 
given  to  eight  Seniors  and  to  two  candidates  for  the  Master's 
degree.  After  this  long  ceremony.  Governor  Saltonstall, 
erect,  strong  of  figure,  vigorous  of  eye, — in  full-bottomed 
periwig,  his  long  ministerial  starched  band  showing  on  his 
many-buttoned  and  flaring-sleeved  coat, — and  with  all  the 
force  and  polish  for  which  he  was  famous  through  all  the 
colonies  and  in  New  York,  steps  forward  in  the  high  pulpit 
and  delivers  a  Latin  speech  which,  coming  from  him  as  the 


360  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

official  head  of  the  Colony,  could  only  mean  the  final  settle- 
ment of  all  disputes,  and  the  beginning  of  a  new  era  for 
the  long-suffering  School.  Governor  Saltonstall  congratu- 
lates the  Trustees  on  their  success  and  courage  in  building 
the  new  college  house,  now  named  "Yale  College"^  by  the 
grace  of  God  and  Governor  Yale,  and  on  "the  comfortable 
appearance  of  things  with  relation  to  their  School."  And 
the  ceremonies  close  again  with  prayer,  after  which  the 
assembly  moves  out  onto  the  broad  tree-shaded  Market- 
place, assured  that  all  the  troubles  of  the  Collegiate  School 
are  at  an  end,  and  that,  as  "Yale  College,"  its  future  is 
sure. 

And  now  the  Trustees  and  the  Colony  high  officials 
and  the  former  Lieutenant  Governor  of  Massachusetts, 
and  the  judges  of  the  Colony  Superior  Court  in  their 
gowns,  and  such  of  the  Colony  Magistrates  as  are  there, 
return  across  the  Market-place,  past  the  dilapidated  old 
Courthouse  and  the  new  Hopkins  Grammar  School  wooden 
building,  to  the  College  Hall,  where  they  are  "entertained 
with  a  splendid  dinner,"  and  the  hoop-skirted  ladies  "at 
the  same  time"  are  "entertained  in  the  Library,"  the  gallant 
Boston  Colonel  joining  them  at  the  table,  after  which,  as 
was  the  custom  of  the  day  on  such  great  occasions,  they  all 
stand  up  and  sing  "the  four  first  verses  in  the  65th 
Psalm,"— 

Thy  praise  alone,  O  Lord,  doth  reign 
In  Sion  thine  own  hill, — 

"and  so  the  day  ended." 

"Everything,"  wrote  Samuel  Johnson,  slipping  back  to 
his  lodgings  that  night  to  write  down  the  doings  of  the 

1  "Yale's  College,"  the  Trustees  informed  the  absent  Cotton  Mather,  was 
the  name  of  the  new  building.  While  the  College  house  itself  was  "Yale 
College,"  the  School  became  by  that  act  popularly  known  by  the  patron's 
name  and  was  so  rechristened  by  the  Trustees  at  this  time. 


"Yale  College"  at  New  Haven  361 

day,  "was  managed  with  so  much  order  and  splendor  that 
the  fame  of  it  extremely  disheartened  the  opposers  and 
made  opposition  fall  before  it."  For  which  consummation, 
no  doubt,  the  Trustees  had  much  to  thank  Governor  Salton- 
stall. 

Yet  the  Trustees  did  not  stop  at  this  final  success  of  their 
long  efforts.  Meeting  in  business  session  on  the  great  day, 
they  had  proceeded  to  vote  that  the  College  library  should 
be  brought  into  the  new  'Yale  College,"  and  that  Rector 
Andrew  should  write  to  "Mr.  Henry  Flynt  [then  the  main- 
stay of  the  teaching  force  at  Harvard,  but  later  to  show 
himself  hardly  adapted  for  the  undertaking]  to  obtain 
from  him  some  good  encouragement  that  he  will  accept  the 
offer  of  a  Rector's  post  in  our  Yale-College,  our  eyes  being 
on  him  for  Rector."  A  "Steward"  was  appointed  in  charge 
of  the  scholars'  rooms  and  board,  and  a  tutor  to  assist 
Samuel  Johnson. 

On  October  8,  171 8,  several  of  the  rooms  in  the  new 
college  house  were  ready  for  use,  and  Samuel  Johnson  had 
his  goods  brought  over  to  it  from  his  lodgings  and  the  new 
assistant  Tutor,  Daniel  Browne,  moved  into  it  from  his 
father's  house  in  West  Haven.  And  I  suppose  that  within 
a  few  weeks  the  handful  of  students  were  given  their  rooms 
by  the  new  "Steward,"  and  that  by  November  the  Col- 
lege was  in  full  operation  under  the  eye  of  the  Rev.  Mr. 
Noyes,  the  local  minister.  At  about  this  time  all  of  the 
Wethersfield  scholars  also  arrived,  bag  and  baggage,  Jona- 
than Edwards,  now  a  Junior,  among  them.  But  they  re- 
turned in  a  month  to  Elisha  Williams,  evidently  still 
dissatisfied  with  the  teaching,  leaving  seventeen  scholars 
with  Johnson.  Though  we  do  not  now  know  the  precise 
reason  for  their  action,  I  imagine  that  the  failure  of  the 
Trustees  to  secure  Tutor  Flynt  of  Harvard  for  the  Rector- 
ship had  something  to  do  with  it.    He,  fortunately  for  Yale 


362  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

College,  had  declined  to  leave  Cambridge,  and  it  would 
appear  that  no  further  immediate  efforts  were  made  to 
select  another  man.  Rector  Andrew  still  remained  the 
nominal  head  of  the  estabhshment. 


V 

So,  in  spite  of  the  settlement  of  the  site  question  by  the 
opportune  gift  of  Elihu  Yale,  the  Hartford  Trustees  still 
stuck  to  their  guns. 

Yet  there  was  now  nothing  left  of  this  long-standing 
opposition  except  the  determination  of  Woodbridge  and 
Buckingham  to  keep  it  up.  Even  the  Lower  House  now 
fell  into  line  with  the  march  of  events,  and  deserted  the 
Hartford  faction.  The  General  Assembly  of  October, 
171 8,  was  as  usual  held  In  New  Haven,  and  its  members 
now  decided  to  patch  up  all  the  past  differences.  The 
Governor  and  Upper  House  on  this  occasion  accepted  the 
invitation  of  the  Trustees  to  leave  Captain  Miles'  convivial 
Tavern  and  hold  their  sessions  In  the  new  College  Library, 
the  Lower  House  sitting,  as  usual,  in  the  Meeting-house 
down  the  hill  on  the  Market-place. 

Over  the  still  tangled  affairs  of  the  newly-named  'Yale 
College"  there  was  now  another  long  legislative  discussion. 
Yet  the  situation  was  plain  enough.  There  had  indeed 
been  a  long  public  squabble  over  the  proper  site  of  the 
Collegiate  School,  with  good  arguments  for  each  of  the 
three  places  that  wanted  It.  But  the  majority  of  the  Trus- 
tees, acting  within  what  the  Assembly  now  agreed  was  their 
right,  had  decided  upon  New  Haven.  They  had  collected 
much  money  for  It.  They  had  succeeded  in  securing  the 
munificent  gift  of  the  great  Governor  Yale  of  London. 
They  had  built  a  splendid  "College  house."  This  and  the 
Institution  Itself,  in  the  presence  of  the  chief  men  of  the 


"Yale  College"  at  New  Haven  363 

Colony,  they  had  named  Yale  College.  And  they  had 
proceeded  to  elect  a  resident  Rector. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  leaders  of  the  Hartford  dissen- 
sion, naturally  enough  under  conditions  prevailing  some 
time  back,  had  refused  to  agree  with  their  fellow  Trustees, 
and  were  persisting  in  their  Wethersfield  enterprise.  In 
fact,  they  had  just  granted  Collegiate  School  degrees,  before 
a  large  country  assembly  in  the  Wethersfield  Meeting-house. 
This,  it  would  now  appear  (as  the  historian  Trumbull 
solemnly  pronounced  it  just  a  century  later)  "could  be  con- 
sidered in  no  other  light  than  that  of  a  great  misdemeanor, 
and  highly  reprehensible."  Yet  both  Woodbridge  and 
Thomas  Buckingham  were  too  important  men  for  even  the 
most  irritated  of  the  New  Haven  party  legislators  to 
chastise  for  all  this  in  public.  The  Assembly  proposed  to 
bring  the  factions  together,  and,  acting  as  the  Colony  Court, 
order  what  should  be  done  to  this  end. 

So  we  find  the  Assembly  voting,  with  reference  to  the 
School,  that  the  public  money  paid  to  it  for  the  past  year 
(as  had  been  refused  affirmative  vote  by  the  Upper  House 
on  the  last  occasion  it  was  proposed)  should  be  divided 
between  the  Tutors  at  all  three  of  the  rival  schools;  that 
the  Wethersfield  graduates  should  be  given  Yale  College 
degrees  "without  examination";  that  all  the  Wethers- 
field scholars  should  be  admitted  to  Yale  College  with 
no  questions  asked;  that  these  scholars  are  "ordered"  to 
"come  down  to  New  Haven";  and  that  "said  college  be 
carried  on,  promoted  and  encouraged  at  New  Haven,  and 
all  due  care  taken  for  its  flourishing."  To  placate  the  dis- 
gruntled Saybrook  and  Hartford  people  for  their  loss,  the 
Assembly  likewise  voted  that  £500  should  be  appropriated 
for  a  fine  new  Statehouse  at  Hartford,  and  that  £50  should 
be  given  to  the  Saybrook  town  school.  The  Assembly  fin- 
ished its  arrangement  of  the  College's  affairs  by  voting  that 


3^4 


The  Beginnings  of  Yale 


the  Governor  and  his  Council,  at  the  request  of  the  Trustees, 
should  give  such  orders  as  were  necessary  "for  the  removing 
of  the  books,  belonging  to  the  said  college,  left  at  Saybrook, 
to  the  library  provided  for  the  placing  of  them  at  New 
Haven." 

VI 

This  action,  regarding  the  books,  as  we  have  seen,  had 
already  been  voted  by  the  Trustees,  and  on  October  28,  in 
accordance  with  the  Assembly's  command  concerning  it. 
Governor  Saltonstall  and  the  Council  ordered  the  Secretary 
of  the  Colony,  one  Wyllys  of  Hartford,  to  make  out  the 
necessary  papers  for  their  transfer.  A  formal  demand  for 
the  College  books  was  therefore  made  out  by  Secretary 
Wyllys  and  sent  by  messenger  to  Saybrook. 


~'~    SfaWe  zHouse 


"Yale  College"  at  New  Haven  365 

Samuel  Johnson,  as  I  have  noted,  had  probably  brought 
over  a  few  of  these  volumes  to  New  Haven  to  assist  him  in 
his  teaching  and  for  his  private  reading  (Sir  Isaac  Newton's 
two  scientific  books  among  them).  But  there  is  evidence 
that  the  remainder  of  the  former  Collegiate  School  collec- 
tion had  remained  at  Saybrook  all  this  time,  awaiting  the 
outcome  of  the  struggle  over  the  site,  and  that  these  were 
still  at  the  old  Thomas  Buckingham  parsonage,  or  at  the 
newly-built  house  of  Daniel  Buckingham,  his  son.  How 
many  volumes  were  thus  at  Saybrook  at  this  time  is  not 
definitely  known.  But  beside  the  forty  or  so  original  books 
given  by  the  "founders"  at  the  first  Saybrook  meeting,  we 
have  seen  some  seven  hundred  arrive  from  Jeremiah 
Dummer,  and  two  hundred  from  Sir  John  Davie.  So  that 
there  were  more  than  a  thousand  books  in  Daniel  Buck- 
ingham's house  when  this  Colony  order  reached  him. 

Two  of  the  Trustees, — young  Thomas  Ruggles,  the  Guil- 
ford minister,  probably  being  one  of  them, — rode  over  to 
Saybrook  early  in  November,  with  a  written  order  for  the 
books  from  Rector  Andrew.  To  their  astonishment  young 
Daniel  Buckingham  received  them  coldly,  saying  that  "he 
did  not  know  that  he  had  any  books  belonging  to  'Yale 
College,'  but  when  he  did,  and  should  receive  authentic 
orders,  he  would  deliver  them."  It  appeared  from  this 
refusal  by  Buckingham  that  the  Saybrook  people,  in  spite 
of  their  £50  sop  from  the  Colony  treasury,  had  not  accepted 
the  situation  and  still  proposed  to  fight  about  it.  The  Rev. 
Azariah  Mather  doubtless  had  his  hand  in  this  turn  of 
events,  and  I  imagine  that  the  Hartford  Trustees  had  theirs. 
The  claim  may  have  been  made,  for  that  matter,  that  the 
books  had  been  given  to  "the  Collegiate  School  at  Say- 
brook," which  was  still  flourishing  with  one  scholar  at  the 
Reverend  Mather's  parsonage,  and  that  those  responsible 
for  the  new  "Yale  College"  at  New  Haven  had  no  right  to 


366  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

them.  This  in  fact  was  worrying  even  the  New  Haven  site 
Trustees,  as  in  a  letter  to  Dummer  he  was  asked  to  say 
plainly  that  he  had  secured  his  gifts  for  the  Collegiate 
School,  "wherever  the  same  were  finally  settled."  Dummer 
later  replied  to  this  to  the  effect  that  the  site  of  the  School 
was  of  no  consequence  to  him,  though  he  hoped  it  would 
be  agreed  upon.  Young  Buckingham  evidently  took  an 
opposite  view,  and  sent  the  two  Trustees  packing.  The 
upshot  was  another  appeal  to  the  Assembly  to  straighten 
matters  out. 

The  story  of  what  now  developed  is  well  known,  as  it  is 
one  of  the  amusing  episodes  in  these  extremely  serious  times. 
Governor  Saltonstall,  already  appealed  to  more  than  once 
to  straighten  out  the  tangled  conditions  of  his  Colony  Col- 
lege, wearily  called  a  Council  meeting  at  Saybrook  early  in 
December,  and  haled  young  Buckingham  before  it.  But 
the  latter  was  obstinate.  He  still  refused  to  give  up  the 
Collegiate  School  books.  So  the  Council  ordered  the  County 
Sheriff  and  his  constables  to  go  down  to  Saybrook  from 
Hartford  and  get  them  by  force. 

We  may  imagine  the  excitement  that  this  show  of  Colony 
official  power  created  in  the  quiet  little  Saybrook  village. 
The  townspeople,  siding  naturally  with  Buckingham  and 
their  minister,  doubtless  leave  their  farms  and  shops  and 
crowd  up  about  young  Buckingham's  house  and  into  it  as 
the  sheriff  and  his  constables  push  their  way  into  the  house. 
(They  say  that  the  house  itself  was  barricaded.)  Doubt- 
less they  jeer  loudly  as  the  constables  emerge,  laden  to  the 
chins  with  the  great  folios  that  had  been  given  by  the 
"founders"  and  the  books  that  Dick  Steele  and  Dr.  Bentley 
and  the  great  Elihu  Yale  and  the  Poet-Laureate  of  England 
had  sent  over.  Probably  they  get  in  the  way  as  much  as 
they  can  and,  as  the  cold  December  afternoon  wanes,  be- 
come more  and  more  excited  as  they  see  the  last  of  the  great 


"Yale  College"  at  New  Haven 


367 


Qringinq  zne 
Coffeae  Qoo(\s 
fo(^vi>  9{aven 


volumes  deposited  in  the  ox-carts  that  have  been  impressed 
by  the  sheriff.  Night  coming,  the  cartloads  of  books  are 
kept  under  guard  till  they  can  be  taken  the  next  morning 
across  country  to  Guilford,  where  Thomas  Ruggles  was  to 
house  them  till  New  Haven  wagons  could  be  sent  over  to 
get  them.  But  during  the  night  the  Saybrook  people  draw 
off  the  guard,  turn  loose  the  oxen,  upset  the  carts,  carry  off 
such  of  the  books  as  they  happen  to  fancy,  and  send  out 
parties  to  break  down  the  bridges  over  the  creeks  west  of 
the  village  toward  Killingworth.  When  morning  comes, 
the  sheriff  finds  himself  left  with  no  helpers,  and  with  as 
many  obstacles  as  possible  put  in  the  way  of  his  doing  any- 
thing further  about  the  business.  But  he  manages  to  collect 
what  he  can  of  the  debris  and  the  next  day  arrives  safely 
at  Guilford  with  a  quarter  of  the  original  library  lost  for 
good,  and  many  of  the  remaining  volumes  permanently 
damaged.  In  his  account  of  this  proceeding,  Samuel  John- 
son says  that  260  books  were  lost  and  1,000  saved. 

This  episode  marks  the  end  of  Old  Saybrook's  appear- 
ance in  Yale  annals.     The  old  town  has  added  to  itself  a 


368  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

new  and  thriving  village  on  the  mainland,  has  transferred 
its  chief  interests  to  it,  and  has  slept  peacefully  throughout 
the  two  centuries  that  have  since  elapsed.  The  early  dream 
of  a  great  Puritan  metropolis,  presided  over  by  Pym  and 
Cromwell,  never  came  true.  The  Market-place  that  was 
to  be  a  New- World  emporium  had  become  the  village  Green 
when  this  affair  of  the  College  books  took  place.  Today, 
with  a  proper  memorial  of  Yale's  first  days  there  set  up  on 
the  Lynde  lot  next  to  the  spot  where  the  fair  Lady  Fenwick 
lies  buried,  the  charming  old  village  is  very  much  the  same 
that  it  was  when  the  Collegiate  School,  for  nine  brief  years, 
was  its  chief  citizen. 


CHAPTER  IX 
RECTOR  CUTLER 


HE  remnant  of  the  Collegiate  School 
books  was  now  in  Samuel  Johnson's 
care  in  the  library  of  the  new  "Yale 
College."  But  the  Hartford  Trustees 
still  refused  to  give  up  their  school  at 
Elisha  WiUiams'  Wethersfield  farm- 
house, and  Governor  Saltonstall  took 
Rector  Andrew's  reins  in  his  hands  and 
again  went  at  the  persistent  problem,  A  formal  joint  meet- 
ing of  the  Colony  Council  and  the  Trustees  was  called  at 
New  Haven  for  the  i  ith  of  March,  17 19,  to  see  what  could 
be  done.  Only  four  or  five  of  the  Trustees  attended  this 
meeting,  and  Woodbridge  and  Thomas  Buckingham  were 
deliberately  among  the  absentees.  But  Saltonstall  proceeded 
to  business. 

Of  the  principal  needs  of  the  struggling  academy,  two 
had  by  this  time  been  met  in  the  securing  of  a  library  and 
funds  for  a  "College  house,"  and  in  the  permanent  settle- 
ment of  the  site  question  in  favor  of  New  Haven. 

There  remained,  however,  the  need  of  a  more  business- 
like government  than  had  been  the  case  since  Rector  Pier- 
son's  death  twelve  years  before.  The  newly-named  Yale 
College  needed  the  right  man  for  resident  Rector.  Samuel 
Andrew  had  never  evinced  any  particular  capacity  for 
affairs  and,  so  far  as  we  now  can  see,  had  not  been  a  very 
strong   factor  In  the  troublous   times  which   I   have  been 


370  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

chronicling.  He  had  been  assisted  by  a  long  succession  of 
young  Tutors,  some  of  whom  had  not  been  successful  as 
teachers  and  all  of  whom  had  been  preparing  themselves, 
while  teaching,  to  become  settled  ministers  elsewhere.  The 
single  flash  of  activity  in  settling  this  question,  in  offering 
the  Rectorship  to  Tutor  Flynt  of  Harvard,  had  died  out, — 
fortunately,  as  it  happened, — with  his  declination.  It  had 
been  because  of  this  failure  that  the  final  refusal  of  the 
Hartford  Trustees  to  join  the  majority  had  probably  been 
made,  and  doubtless  with  good  reason. 

All  of  which  now  resulted  in  a  highly  entertaining,  if 
serious,  student  outbreak.  The  Assembly  had  ordered  the 
fourteen  Wethersfield  students  to  "come  down"  to  New 
Haven,  and  they  had  come,  including  Jonathan  Edwards. 
They  proved  an  unruly  and  rebellious  lot.  And  they  pro- 
ceeded, so  Sir  Johnson  believed,  "to  unhorse"  him  from  his 
Tutorship.  This  "black  design"  is  possibly  borne  out  by 
the  facts.  For  the  Wethersfield  scholars  at  once  began  to 
make  trouble  at  the  College  and  in  the  town,  being  "very 
immoral  in  their  Conversation  so  that  they  became  odious 
to  the  people  of  ye  Town,"  writes  Johnson,  and  to  "get 
together  a  Collection  of  faults"  with  "the  public  Exposi- 
tions &  Disputations  &  managements  of  the  Tutors  &  espe- 
cially of  the  two  upper  Classes  which  were  under  me." 
Johnson  says  that  these  complaints  were  sent  clandestinely 
to  Timothy  Woodbridge  and  approved  by  him  as  sufficient 
grounds  for  further  efforts  on  his  part  to  attack  the  College, 
though  Woodbridge  later  on  emphatically  denied  that  he 
had  had  anything  to  do  with  it.  And  they  did  not  stop 
there,  for  "presently  thereupon  comes  3  of  the  parents  of 
the  Scholars  to  see  how  it  was,  &  they  designed  to  have 
them  away."  Rector  Andrew  being  hastily  sent  for.  Trus- 
tee Samuel  Russel  already  being  at  the  College  house,  there 
was  a  great  powwow  between  the  parents  and  College  offi- 


Rector  Cutler  371 


cers,  which  resulted  in  Andrew's  supporting  Johnson,  but 
asking  time  from  the  parents  to  call  a  special  meeting  of 
his  Board.  The  "3  parents,"  publicly  agreeing  to  this  post- 
ponement, privately  permitted  their  sons  to  leave  New 
Haven.  Here  was  a  great  to-do,  and,  as  Johnson  writes, 
"The  SchoUars  were  going  away  all  so  fast"  that  the  Rev. 
Mr,  Noyes  had  to  come  into  the  breach,  and  agree  with  the 
parents  to  take  the  Juniors  himself  and  hand  over  the 
Seniors  to  Reverend  Moss  of  Derby.  But  even  this  did  not 
help  matters,  the  disaffected  parents  evidently  being  ready 
to  take  away  their  sons  on  any  pretext.  A  week  later  they 
returned  with  horses  and  all  of  the  scholars  of  the  Wethers- 
field  faction  "went  away  but  one."  While  Timothy  Wood- 
bridge  may  not  have  been  a  factor  in  this  situation,  I  imagine 
that  he  received  the  news  of  it  with  satisfaction.  At  about 
this  time  he  had  written  to  Benjamin  Coleman,  a  Harvard 
Fellow,  suggesting  that  the  dissatisfied  Yale  students  might 
finish  their  course  of  study  at  Harvard.  He  was  quite 
willing,  at  least,  that  his  own  stepson,  in  the  Class  of  17 18, 
should  do  so.  Coleman  very  honestly  and  frankly  replied 
that  he  did  not  think  this  would  be  a  good  thing.  It  would 
be  "heavily  borne"  by  the  New  Haven  site  faction,  he  said, 
and  he  rather  advised  Woodbridge,  whose  "generous  public 
spirit"  was  well  known,  to  quit  the  struggle.  He  did  not 
think  that  Harvard  should  receive  "any  number  of  your 
Scholars  at  this  critical  time,"  though  he  was  willing  that 
Woodbrldge's  son  should  come.  Nothing  therefore  came 
of  this  original  idea  of  the  Hartford  minister,  even  his 
stepson  continuing  at  the  New  Haven  College. 

But  the  whole  situation  was  now  one  which  could  not  be 
permitted,  for  the  good  of  the  Colony,  to  continue  any 
longer.  At  the  joint  meeting  of  the  Trustees  and  the 
Assembly,  therefore,  Governor  Saltonstall  brought  the 
problem  down  to  the  one  issue  of  a  proper  head  for  the 


3/2  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

School.     The  College  officers  were  practically  told  by  the 
General  Assembly  to  find  such  a  Rector. 

Proceeding,  with  some  alacrity,  to  this  end,  the  Trustees 
took  Mr.  Andrew's  advice  and  offered  the  post,  pro  tern 
for  the  moment,  to  his  son-in-lav/,  a  young  minister  then 
settled  over  the  Stratford  Congregational  church. 

II 

This  young  man,  then  but  thirty-six  years  of  age,  was  the 
Rev.  Timothy  Cutler.  He  was  a  Charlestown,  Massachu- 
setts, boy,  and  had  been  graduated  at  Harvard  under 
Increase  Mather  in  the  year  that  the  Connecticut  Collegiate 
School  had  been  started.  He  had  come  to  the  Stratford 
Meeting-house  from  Boston  as  old  Israel  Chauncy's  suc- 
cessor, in  1709,  with  a  reputation  of  being  "one  of  the  best 
preachers  both  colonies  afforded."  He  had  married  a 
daughter  of  Rector  Andrew  of  Milford  shortly  after  set- 
tling at  near-by  Stratford,  and  was  at  this  time  conducting 
the  affairs  of  his  little  congregation  with  success.  We  have 
President  Stiles'  word  for  it  that  he  was  "great  In  the 
philosophy,  metaphysics,  and  ethics  of  his  day."  He  was  a 
fluent  user  of  Latin  In  conversation  and  public  addresses, 
and  was  "of  a  commanding  presence  and  dignity."  And  he 
was  a  great  reader.  He  had  become  a  close  friend  of  Tutor 
Samuel  Johnson, — but  a  few  years  his  junior, — and  so  had 
found  himself  a  frequent  traveler  to  New  Haven  to  read 
the  books  which  Johnson  had  brought  over  from  Saybrook. 
I  suppose,  in  the  light  of  after-events,  that  It  was  the  oppor- 
tunity which  the  Rectorship  offered  him,  of  being  closer  to 
these  books,  which  decided  him  to  accept  the  position. 

Asked  to  relieve  him  from  their  church  ministry  to 
accept  the  Rectorship  of  Yale  College,  the  Stratford  people 
had   "passively"   submitted   "to   God"   in   the   matter   and 


Rector  Cutler 


373 


nv^^mlll»IIM|lllH^nM^^^Mlllll]l»fl^llL»l^llMllllrMlillunlrl^llllll^ll^nlHMllll^llllll;^ 


aiiriiinpiiniii |iniiiii|iiiiniii|m ^||llllllll iliniimiilllllllHIIIinBa 


9^cfor  ^mdfhy  Cuifer 

agreed  to  it,  which  was  more  than  the  KilHngworth  people 
had  done  in  Rector  Pierson's  case.  Yet  they  had  asked  back 
the  parsonage  and  "home  lot"  which  he  had  been  given  on 
settling  there,  as  the  KilHngworth  people  had  wanted  in 
their  settlement  of  the  Pierson  request;  and  the  Rev.  Mr. 
Cutler  had  handed  it  back,  as  Abraham  Pierson  had  not 
been  willing  to.  The  demand  of  the  Stratford  people  for 
£ioo  to  call  a  new  minister  seems  to  have  been  gladly  com- 
plied with  by  a  General  Assembly  that  saw  itself  thus  rid 
of  the  College  trouble.  In  March,  17 19,  Rector  Cutler 
arrived  at  New  Haven  and  began  his  duties  as  the  new 
head  of  the  academy. 

It  naturally  had  been  expected  by  Governor  Saltonstall 
that  this  last  act  in  settling  the  difficulties  of  the  divided 
Colony  college  would  have  brought  the  two  Hartford  Trus- 
tees into  the  fold.     But  for  some  reason  or  other,  they  still 


374  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

held  out.  Woodbridge,  especially,  persisted.  There  is 
extant  a  letter  from  Governor  Saltonstall  of  this  date, 
written  to  Rev.  James  Noyes,  which  throws  an  interesting 
light  on  the  Hartford  leader's  attitude.  Woodbridge  way- 
laid the  Governor,  says  the  latter,  "as  I  came  out  of  town" 
on  horseback,  and  buttonholed  him  on  the  College  site  ques- 
tion. Saltonstall  tells  Noyes  that  Woodbridge  "moved  me 
to  desire  a  Meeting  of  the  Trustees ;  I  told  him  I  could  not 
think  It  would  be  of  good  Consequence  for  such  a  Motion 
to  begin  with  Me."  Woodbridge  pushed  the  point  and  the 
Governor  told  him  that  if  he  himself  "would  move,  I  would 
give  It  what  Favour  I  might;  and  offered  him  If  He  would 
write,  to  take  Care  of  a  Lettr  to  You,  Who  would  probably 
discourse  with  Me  about  It."  This  Woodbridge  was  dis- 
inclined to  do,  and  the  conversation  ended  there.  Salton- 
stall added,  for  Noyes'  own  information,  that  he  continued 
to  stand  with  the  Trustees  and  did  not  propose  to  "insert 
my  Self  into  their  Affairs,  till  I  see  further  Reason  for  It." 
If  the  attitude  of  these  two  disaffected  Hartford  ministers 
had  hitherto  passed  through  the  successive  stages  of  local 
pride,  educational  ambition  for  their  neighbors'  sons,  and 
obstinacy,  it  now  seems  to  have  taken  the  character  of 
downright  pig-headedness.  For,  in  spite  of  the  complete 
failure  of  their  efforts  to  get  the  College  for  Hartford,  and 
the  popularity  of  the  New  Haven  settlement  throughout  the 
Colony,  they  now  made  a  final  move  to  even  up  matters  with 
Saltonstall,  whose  interference  in  affairs  had  finally  spiked 
their  guns.  To  this  end  both  Timothy  Woodbridge  and 
Thomas  Buckingham  offered  themselves  for  election  as  the 
two  Deputies  from  Hartford  in  the  May  election  in  17 19 
that  now  came  on.  This  extraordinary  and  unprecedented 
action  could  have  been  but  for  the  one  purpose  that  they 
now  showed  in  it.  For  they  began  a  Colony-wide  propa- 
ganda to  secure  the  defeat  of  Governor  Saltonstall  for  the 


Rector  Cutler  375 


next  annual  term,  with  the  idea  that  one  Gold,  at  the  time 
Lieutenant  Governor,  would  become  head  of  the  Upper 
House  in  his  place,  and,  with  themselves  leading  the  Lower, 
undo  what  had  been  done  regarding  the  Colony  College. 
But  the  scheme  fell  through.  There  was  a  great  popular 
rally  to  the  support  of  Saltonstall  at  the  next  election.  He 
was  overwhelmingly  reelected  Governor,  though  the  two 
Hartford  Trustees  got  into  the  Lower  House,  as  they  had 
planned.  Woodbridge  made  the  opening  prayer  of  the 
session,  but  seems  to  have  made  some  remark  that  infuriated 
the  Governor.  Saltonstall,  long-suffering  in  his  efforts  to 
smooth  the  ruffled  Hartford  Trustees,  now  blazed  forth  in 
what  was  undoubtedly  a  very  proper  temper.  He  caused 
charges  for  defamation  of  character  to  be  brought  by  a 
down-river  Deputy  in  the  Lower  House  against  the  luckless 
Rev.  Timothy  Woodbridge.  The  House  sustained  these 
charges  and  voted  to  exclude  Woodbridge,  who  vigorously 
replied,  and  the  Upper  House  called  for  a  further  hearing. 
Though  we  do  not  know  the  outcome,  the  Reverend  Wood- 
bridge  appears  to  have  from  that  moment  been  withdrawn 
as  a  factor  in  the  now-concluded  Hartford  fight.  His  inter- 
est in  the  College  while  Timothy  Cutler  was  Rector,  was 
sufficient  to  induce  his  wife,  a  wealthy  woman  by  a  previous 
marriage,  to  give  a  bell  to  the  College  house.  Cutler, 
thanking  Madam  Woodbridge  for  it  in  a  letter  to  her  hus- 
band, says  that  it  was  put  in  place  (in  1720)  "and  gives  a 
very  pleasant  clear  Sound."  From  that  time  forth,  Timothy 
Woodbridge  was  a  staunch  friend  of  the  College. 

It  was  at  this  time  that  Elisha  Williams  underwent  his 
long  sickness  which  I  mentioned  in  another  chapter,  and 
recovered  from  it  so  "sanctified"  that  he  decided  to  leave  off 
teaching  and  enter  the  ministry  at  Newington,  just  outside 
of  Wethersfield.  I  presume  that  this  event,  together  with 
the    Reverend    Woodbridge's    public    scarification    in    the 


376 


The  Beginnings  of  Yale 


Assembly,  must  have  been  the  prime  occasion  for  the  final 
winding  up  of  the  school  at  his  Wethersfield  farm  that  now 
took  place.  For  in  June,  17 19,  all  of  the  Wethersfield 
scholars,  among  them  Jonathan  Edwards,  finally  left  the 
Hartford  establishment  and  joined  their  former  Fellows  at 
the  new  Yale  College  at  New  Haven. 

This  was  the  end  of  the  long  drawn-out 
struggle  over  the  Colony  College  site.  The 
new  students  found  good  rooms  in  the  new 
College  hall,  and,  in  Rector  Cutler,  a  head 
of  the  institution  who, 
as  Jonathan  Edwards 
wrote  to  his  father  in 
that  letter  from  which 
I  have  already  quoted, 
"is  extraordinarily  cour- 
teous to  us,  has  a  very 
good  spirit  of  govern- 
ment, keeps  the  school 
in  excellent  order, 
seems  to  increase  in 
learning,  is  loved  and 
respected  by  all  who 
are  under  him,  and 
when  he  is  spoken  of 
in  the  school  or  town, 
generally  has  the  title 
of  President."  And 
young  Edwards  adds 
that  he  thanks  his  father  for  advice  given  him.  "I  am,"  he 
says,  "sensible  of  the  preciousness  of  my  time,  .  .  .  and  I 
take  very  great  content  under  my  present  tuition,  as  all  the 
rest  of  the  scholars  seem  to  do  under  theirs.  .  .  .  The 
scholars   all  live   in  very  good  peace  with  the  people  of 


/&  Sf  Sifes  Cfiurcft, 
^rvrexham 


Rector  Cutler  377 


the  town,  and  there  is  not  a  word  said  about  our  former 
carryings  on." 

Ill 

According  to  President  Clap's  later  compilation  of  gifts 
to  the  College  up  to  this  time,  it  would  appear  that,  in 
addition  to  the  books  previously  mentioned,  and  the  private 
and  public  money  pledges,  the  Treasurer  of  the  College  had 
received  £50  from  Governor  Saltonstall,  and  £io  from  his 
good  Lady,  two  acres  of  land  in  New  Haven  from  one 
Joseph  Peck,  seven  acres  in  New  Haven  from  Tutor  Moss 
of  Derby  and  seven  from  his  father,  eight  acres  In  West 
Haven  from  Captain  Samuel  Smith,  and  twenty-eight  books 
from  Dr.  Daniel  Turner  of  London.  The  General  As- 
sembly had  voted  £300  worth  of  the  new  lands,  and  £40 
annually  for  the  next  seven  years  to  the  College  for  the 
Tutors'  salaries. 

Moreover,  there  was  much  talk  of  further  benefactions 
from  Governor  Yale,  who  by  this  time  had  received  the 
thanks  of  the  Trustees  and  an  account  by  them  of  the  cere- 
monies at  the  dedication  of  the  "College  house"  and  of 
their  action  in  naming  the  institution  after  him,  as  Cotton 
Mather  had  promised.  Jeremiah  Dummer  had  reported 
the  reception  of  this  address  by  the  now  aged  and  infirm 
capitalist.  The  old  gentleman,  it  appears,  was  more  than  a 
little  pleased  by  the  affair,  "saying,"  writes  Dummer,  "that 
he  expressed  at  first  some  kind  of  concern  whether  it  was 
well  in  him,  being  a  churchman,  to  promote  an  Academy  of 
Dissenters.  But  when  he  had  discoursed  the  point  freely 
[and  no  doubt  been  informed  by  Dummer,  as  had  been 
old  Doctor  Salmon,  that  the  Connecticut  ministers  prob- 
ably would  change  the  seminary's  theology  to  suit.  If  he 
pressed  the  point]  he  appeared  convinced  that  the  business 
of  good  men   is  to   spread   religion   and  learning  among 


378  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

mankind,  without  being  too  fondly  attached  to  particular 
tenets  about  which  the  world  never  was,  nor  ever  will  be, 
agreed."  All  of  which  was  extremely  broad-minded  of  a 
former  India  merchant  who  had  not  worried  very  much 
about  such  matters  in  the  process  of  squeezing  that  portion 
of  mankind  nearest  him  for  his  riches.  "Besides,"  puts  in 
Dummer,  quoting  the  great  man,  who  was  now  a  contented 
and  honored  pew-holder  in  a  London  parish  church,  "if 
the  discipline  of  the  Church  of  England  be  most  agreeable 
to  Scripture  and  primitive  practice,  there's  no  better  way  to 
make  men  sensible  of  it  than  by  giving  them  good  learning." 
Governor  Yale,  having  eased  his  Episcopal  conscience  with 
this  energetic  first  aid  from  the  elastic-conscienced  Dummer, 
now  agreed  to  give  £200  a  year  to  his  "Yale  College" 
during  the  remainder  of  his  life  and  "to  make  a  settled 
annual  provision  to  take  place  after  his  death."  Goods 
valued  at  £100  were  reported  shipped  by  Dummer  two  years 
later.  And  Dummer  constantly  pushed  ahead  for  more.  "I 
was  with  him  last  night,  to  refresh  his  memory  about  the 
books,  pictures,  &  other  presents  which  I  formerly  men- 
tioned to  you,  but  it  seems  they  won't  be  in  order  'till  a 
month  hence."  These  "presents"  had  been  expected  to  be 
"Mr.  Yale's  picture  at  full  length  with  his  nephew's  on  the 
same  canvas,"^  which,  Dummer  said,  had  been  "drawn  for 
a  present  to  your  Colledge  Hall,  and  another  parcel  of 
Books,  part  of  which  he  has  promis'd  me  shall  be  the  Royal 
transactions  in  seventeen  Volumes."  Governor  Yale  had 
also  thought  to  send  over  "a  pair  of  Globes,"  but  Dummer 
had  told  him  that  the  School  already  had  them,  and  Yale 

1  The  Elizabethan  Club  at  the  University  possesses  a  full  length  painting 
of  Elihu  Yale  with  a  youth  at  his  side.  The  age  or  origin  of  this  portrait 
has  never  been  determined.  The  representation  of  Yale  in  it,  however,  is  of 
a  man  much  younger  than  the  one  in  the  Zeeman  painting  which  hangs  in 
the  University  Dining  Hall,  and  which  was  done  in  1717,  according  to 
President  Stiles. 


Rector  Cutler  379 


had  agreed  to  send  instead  "some  mathematical  instru- 
ments, &  glasses  for  making  philosophical  Experiments,  as 
Microscopes,  Telescopes,  &  other  glasses  for  use  as  well  as 
for  ornament  &  curiosity." 

"But  old  gentlemen  are  forgetful,"  Dummer  writes  to 
the  Trustees.  And  Governor  Yale  proved  the  adage.  For 
he  never  proceeded  with  his  annual  pledge,  nor  did  he  put 
the  New  Haven  college  in  his  will.  He  died  intestate  on 
July  8,  1721,  at  his  house  in  Great  Ormond  Street,  and 
that  was  the  last  the  Connecticut  College  heard  of  him. 
Poor  Jeremiah  Dummer,  this  second  chance  having  slipped 
through  his  fingers  through  the  untimely  arrival  of  the 
Great  Reaper,  hustled  about  to  see  what  he  could  do  about 
it  for  several  years  thereafter.  But  though  he  made  tre- 
mendous efforts  to  interest  Yale's  three  daughters  (one 
of  whom  was  married  to  Dudley  Lord  North  and  another 
to  James  Cavendish,  uncle  of  the  Duke  of  Devonshire) 
nothing  ever  came  of  it.  There  is  a  story  that  Governor 
Yale,  just  before  his  death,  had  himself  seen  to  the  packing 
up  of  £500  worth  of  goods  to  send  to  the  New  Haven 
Trustees,  but  that  he  died  before  he  could  manage  it.  These 
goods  were  duly  unpacked  and  distributed  with  his  estate 
to  his  noble  daughters,  and  to  that  unmarried  Ursula  who 
survived  him. 

These  fine  things  were  all  in  prospect  in  17 19,  and  I  do 
not  doubt  were  expected  by  the  Trustees  of  the  new  Yale 
College.  In  the  meanwhile  they  needed  their  Rector's  house, 
had  voted  to  build  it,  and  were  asking  Colony  aid  again  for 
it.  The  Upper  House  again  was  sympathetic,  but  the  Depu- 
ties balked,  as  usual.  Not  only  did  they  not  wish  to  give 
Colony  money  outright  to  the  College,  but  they  reported 
that  there  was  "too  great  a  spirit  of  learning  in  the  land" 
anyway,  and  that  "more  are  brought  up  to  it  than  will  be 
needed  or  find  improvement"   (in  which  we  light  upon  the 


38o 


The  Beginnings  of  Yale 


first  instance  in  Yale  history  of  the  hard-headed  questioning 
of  the  value  of  a  college  education).  But  in  May,  1721, 
the  Assembly  agreed  to  permit  the  Trustees  again  to  cir- 
culate a  "brief"  to  raise  money, — this  time  for  the  Rector's 
house.  A  Colony  collection  was  taken  on  the  Sabbath  day, 
July  23,  which  came  to  £100,  paid  in  small  individual  con- 
tributions from  pew-holders  in  the  sixty-five  Meeting-houses 
of  the  Colony. 

But  this  was  not  enough,  and  in  October,  the  Assembly, 
in  passing  an  Act  "for  the  better  Regulating  the  Duty  of 
Impost  upon  Rhum,"  voted  that  all  the  money  derived  from 
that  genial  source  during  the  first  two  years  after  its  en- 
forcement should  be  paid  over  toward  helping  the  College 
build  its  Rector's  house.  President  Clap  lists  this  as  £115 
in  his  itemized  account  of  the  College  assets  in  1722.  The 
house  cost  was  £260,  according  to  the  same  authority, 
though  other  authority  is  to  the  effect  that  the  contract  with 
Caner,  the  "College-house"  builder,  called  for  £600,  the 
discrepancy  doubtless  arising  from  the  terms  in  which  the 
figures  are  given. 


CHAPTER  X 


THE  NEW  HAVEN  OF  TIMOTHY  CUTLER 


HE  twoscore  youths  who  were  gath- 
ered together  under  young  Timothy 
Cutler's  promising  Rectorship  in  the 
new  Yale  College  hall  in  June,  17 19, 
found  themselves  living  in  the  midst  of 
a  village  life  that  had  hardly  changed 
from  the  quiet  provincialism  of  James 
Pierpont's  times,  as  that,  in  its  turn, 
had  not  progressed  far  beyond  John  Davenport's. 

New  Haven's  total  population  was  less  than  a  thousand 
at  this  time,  and  there  were  perhaps  a  hundred  and  fifty 
houses.  Except  for  scattered  farms  south  of  the  present 
George  Street  and  north  of  Grove,  and  a  somewhat  closely- 
built  seafaring  section  east  of  the  present  State  and  Meadow 
Streets  and  thus  down  to  the  harbor's  shore,  the  village  was 
much  the  same  as  when  the  first  efforts  had  been  begun  for 
the  Colony  college.  If  we  might,  in  fancy,  accompany  one 
of  the  new  College  Freshmen  about  this  little  village  on  his 
first  walk  of  a  Sabbath  afternoon,  we  might  picture  to  our- 
selves, with  some  approach  to  vividness,  what  sort  of  a 
place  this  New  Haven  of  Rector  Cutler's  day  was. 

And  I  suppose  that  the  small  compass  of  the  place  would 
be  the  first  thing  that  would  interest  such  a  stranger. 
Meadows,  rye-  and  oat-fields  and  stubbly  clearings  on  which 
the  cattle  and  geese  and  pigs  of  the  townsfolk,  pastured, 
surrounded  the  original  nine  squares,  except  where  here  and 


382  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

there  the  woods  came  in  close  to  the  town's  outskirts,  as  was 
the  case  in  the  whole  section  now  traversed  by  Whitney 
Avenue  and  Prospect  Hill.  No  cross  lanes  had  up  to  this 
time  been  cut  through  the  original  town  streets  laid  out  by 
John  Brockett  for  Theophilus  Eaton's  settlers.  Country 
roads  had  branched  off  from  the  western  ends  of  the  modern 
Chapel  and  Elm  Streets  and  the  north  end  of  College,  while 
"Neck  Lane"  and  "Payne's  Gate"  led  off  eastward  from 
the  north  end  of  what  is  now  State  Street.  The  three  creeks 
on  the  banks  of  which  Michael  Wigglesworth's  elders  had 
built  their  first  rude  huts  in  1638,  still  led  up  into  the 
"quarters"  from  about  where  the  railroad  yards  are  today. 
One  of  these  rippled  along  the  east  side  of  the  modern  State 
Street,  its  west  bank  dotted  by  a  few  houses  belonging  to 
sailmakers,  tanners,  weavers,  and  "mariners."  A  second 
creek,  emerging  from  the  ancient  swamp  at  the  southeast 
corner  of  the  Market-place,  still  trickled  muddily  across 
town  and  into  the  State  Street  rivulet.  The  broader  and 
deeper  creek  just  south  of  the  present  George  Street,  up 
which  John  Davenport's  small  vessel  with  its  burden  of  the 
original  settlers  had  sailed  to  the  College  Street  corner,  was 
still  a  sizable  stream  in  17 19,  so  navigable  that  boats  could 
land  passengers  where  High  Street  now  joins  George,  at 
which  place  stood  a  blacksmith's  shop  in  Rector  Cutler's 
day. 

All  of  the  original  outside  eight  squares  of  the  village 
were  at  this  time  fringed,  as  they  had  been  since  the  settle- 
ment, by  farmhouses,  the  interior  of  these  blocks  being 
fenced-in  open  orchards,  meadows  and  cornfields.  Weavers, 
blacksmiths,  joiners,  soap-boilers,  saddlers,  cordwainers, 
coopers,  clothiers,  and  millers  occupied  many  of  these 
houses,  plying  their  trades,  no  doubt,  there,  though  the 
Town-mill  was  out  the  present  Orange  Street  near  East 
Rock.     But,  from  the  old  map  of  Joseph  Brown  of  1724, 


The  New  Haven  of  Timothy  Cutler         383 

from  which  we  can  reconstruct  something  of  the  New 
Haven  of  those  days,  most  of  the  folk  were  "husbandmen," 
"yeomen,"  and  "planters."  Numerous  "deserted"  houses, — 
relics  of  Davenport's  times, — appear  In  the  outlying  streets 
on  Brown's  map,  and  no  doubt  many  of  the  homesteads 
actively  in  use  were  antiquated  and  weather-beaten  survivors 
of  those  older  days,  James  Pierpont's  parsonage,  fronting 
the  Market-place  behind  his  two  "great  elms,"  was  occupied 
by  his  son,  now  fatuously  pursuing  the  English  Pierrepont 
earldom.  His  successor  in  the  village  Meeting-house, 
Joseph  Noyes,  lived  in  the  old  Eaton  mansion  down  Elm 
Street,  while  Treasurer  Prout's  house  was  far  down  toward 
the  harbor  line  on  what  is  now  Water  Street,  as  became  the 
Naval  Officer  of  the  Port. 

But  such  a  new  arrival  at  the  College  would  have  been 
more  interested  in  the  great  Market-place  of  the  town,  and 
the  life  about  the  new  Yale  College  house  facing  it  from 
its  southwest  corner.  And  he  would  have  found  his  tower- 
ing College  hall  but  a  small  part  of  this  public  center  of 
New  Haven.  The  square  bounded  by  what  are  now  Chapel, 
York,  Elm,  and  College  Streets  at  this  time  had  but  eight 
houses  on  It,  two  or  three  barns,  and  a  group  of  surviving 
log  "Sabbath-day  houses"  where  York  and  Elm  now  meet. 
On  York  Street,  beside  these  cabins,  lived  the  two  Hotchkiss 
families,  farmers,  and  Sam.  Chatterton,  weaver,  who  was 
domiciled  at  the  Chapel  Street  corner.  One  house  faced 
the  present  Elm  Street,  about  where  Peabody  Museum  now 
stands.  On  Chapel  Street  above  High,  lived  one  Jonathan 
Tuttle,  a  "planter";  Stephen  Ball,  soap-maker,  had  his 
odoriferous  premises  where  the  Art  School  now  stands. 
On  College  Street,  Sam  Mix,  "yeoman,"  lived  at  the 
Battell  Chapel  corner,  while  two  barns  and  the  farmhouse 
of  one  Joshua  Tuttle,  "husbandman,"  filled  In  the  present 
sites  of   Farnam,   Lawrance,   and  Welch   Halls.      On  the 


The  New  Haven  of  Timothy  Cutler        385 

Chapel  Street  corner,  built  close  to  the  street  lines,  and 
within  its  low  wood  fence,  was  Elihu  Yale's  magnificent 
structure  that  Cotton  Mather  had  prophesied  would  be  a 
finer  affair  than  an  Egyptian  pyramid.  Three  farmhouses 
faced  Chapel  Street  on  the  other  side  from  the  modern  Old 
Campus,  as  did  three  on  Elm  Street, — Lieutenant  Mix, 
Deputy  to  the  Assembly,  living  where  the  Divinity  School 
now  stands. 

In  the  midst  of  all  this  quiet  village  life  was  the  great 
Market-place,  still  more  or  less  as  it  had  been  in  the  early 
days  of  the  Colony.  Facing  it,  across  the  present  crowded 
and  busy  Chapel  Street,  were  two  large  and  ancient  houses, 
one,  at  Chapel  and  College  Streets,  that  had  formerly  been 
Captain  Miles'  Tavern,  now  belonging  to  one  Mr.  Wood- 
house,  and  the  other,  far  down  where  Chapel  and  Church 
now  intersect,  occupied  by  the  descendants  of  the  ruined 
Gregson  of  Captain  Lamberton's  "Great  Shippe"  days. 
Between  these,  where  Temple  now  crosses  Chapel,  was  a 
barn.  So  that  the  Yale  College  student  of  17 19,  walking 
down  Chapel  Street  in  his  flowing  college  gown  and  broad 
flat  hat,  had  nothing  but  this  barn  and  gardens  and  open 
fields  to  look  at  across  from  the  present  Green.  Four 
houses  stood  on  the  Elm  Street  side  of  the  Market-place  at 
that  time,  and  as  many  on  Church  Street,  the  great  spaces 
between  them  being  fenced-off  meadows  and  orchards,  with 
the  virgin  woods  and  harbor  beyond. 

The  Market-place  itself  at  this  time  was  but  little  changed 
from  James  Pierpont's  day.  The  second  Meeting-house 
had  been  built  in  1668,  and  enlarged  sometime  later,  as  we 
have  seen.  It  was  about  in  the  center  of  the  public  square, 
probably  just  east  of  the  present  Temple  Street,  and  was 
of  wood,  with  a  pyramidal  roof,  upon  the  apex  of  which, 
in  an  open  belfry,  still  hung  the  bell  that  we  have  seen  pur- 
chased for  it  from  a  sailorman  in  the  harbor.     The  Town 


386  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

whipping-post  still  stood  on  the  College  Street  side  of  the 
Market-place,  and  just  north  of  it  the  "gaol."  It  had  been 
ii:  this  same  year,  17 19,  that  the  two  first  important  changes 
in  the  appearance  of  the  old  public  square  had  been  made. 
One  of  these  was  the  erection  of  a  Statehouse.  This  was 
now  being  built  at  College  and  Elm  Streets,  by  Caner,  whose 
work  on  the  "College  house"  had  been  approved  by  the 
townsfolk  and  Assembly,  and  who  was  now  living  on  Chapel 
Street  in  an  old  house  facing  the  present  site  of  the  Art 
School.  The  new  Statehouse  was  a  two-story  wooden 
structure,  some  forty-five  by  twenty-two  feet  in  size,  with 
a  great  chimney  at  either  end,  and  was  to  be  used  by  the 
County  courts  and  by  the  General  Assembly  until  1763,  when 
a  Boston-style  brick  Statehouse  superseded  it  between  the 
present  Trinity  and  Center  Churches  on  Temple  Street. 
Just  before  this  time,  the  Town  had  voted  to  build  a  new 
house  for  the  Hopkins  Grammar  School.  This  was  now 
being  built  on  the  College  Street  side  of  the  Market-place, 
between  the  whipping-post  and  Chapel  Street  and  nearly 
opposite  "Yale  College."  The  old  Cheever  School,  that 
had  been  enlarged  for  the  Hopkins  Grammar  School,  was 
still  standing  at  this  time  near  Elm  and  Temple  Streets 
(though  Brown's  map  does  not  show  it  for  some  reason  or 
other),  and  was  to  be  used  for  an  "English  school"  until 
1756,  when  a  brick  building  took  its  place.  West  of  the 
Meeting-house  of  course  lay  the  village  cemetery,  making, 
all  in  all,  with  the  prison  and  whipping-post,  a  cheerful 
outlook  for  the  scholars  in  the  "College  house,"  and  one 
that  no  doubt  had  a  salutary  effect  upon  their  morals. 

II 

It  may  have  been  the  very  gloom  of  these  surroundings 
that  helped  to  throw  the  College  into  a  great  uproar,  in 


The  New  Haven  of  Timothy  Cutler         387 

Rector  Cutler's  second  year.  There  had  been  a  student 
uprising  at  Saybrook  over  the  boarding  accommodations 
and  the  teaching;  the  Wethersfield  group  had  raised  a  rum- 
pus over  Sir  Johnson;  in  172 1  the  entire  student  body  rose 
in  its  wrath  over  the  Commons.  There  seems  to  have 
been  trouble,  from  the  first,  to  secure  a  competent  steward 
and  a  cook  for  the  College  kitchen.  In  Cutler's  first  year 
as  Rector  the  Trustees  had  "discoursed"  with  Captain  John 
Munson,  the  middle-aged  steward,  over  the  hiring  of  a 
cook.  The  Widow  Hannah  Beecher  had  been  offered  the 
place  as  "standing  cook,"  and  the  Trustees  had  voted  that 
"fresh  meat  be  provided  for  the  Schollars  Dinner  3  times 
a  Week."  But  this  did  not  solve  the  difliculty.  Within  the 
year  the  students  were  muttering  discontents  over  the  food 
at  the  long  tables  in  the  hall  of  the  College  house.  Jonathan 
Edwards  was  a  resident  postgraduate  student  at  this  time, 
and  a  letter  to  his  father  tells  the  story.  Suddenly,  in  Feb- 
ruary, 172 1,  the  entire  undergraduate  body  as  one  man 
agreed  to  boycott  the  Commons  of  Captain  Munson  and 
put  themselves  under  bonds  of  fifteen  shillings  apiece  to 
stand  by  each  other.  When  Munson  put  on  the  food  no 
one  appeared  to  eat  it.  Rector  Cutler  sent  for  Trustees 
Andrew  and  Russel,  and  haled  the  undergraduate  body  into 
his  presence,  where  he  laid  down  the  law  with  such  firmness 
that  he  "affrighted  the  scholars  that  they  unanimously 
agreed  to  come  into  commons  again."  But  this  did  not  end 
the  matter.  The  students  worked  themselves  up  into  a 
great  state  of  rebellion.  They  committed  "some  monstrous 
impieties,  and  acts  of  immorality,"  says  Edwards.  Espe- 
cially prominent  among  these  latter  crimes  were  the  steal- 
ings of  "hens,  geese,  turkies,  piggs,  meat,  wood,  &c — 
unseasonable  nightwalking,  breaking  people's  windows, 
playing  at  cards,  cursing,  swearing,  and  damning,  and  using 
all  manner  of  111  language,  which  never  were  at  such  a  pitch 


388  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

in  the  Colledge  as  they  are  now."  Rector  Cutler  finally 
called  a  Trustees'  meeting  and  expelled  some  of  the  ring- 
leaders. 

The  affair  must  have  made  a  considerable  stir  in  the 
quiet  provincial  village,  where  there  was  not  much  excite- 
ment for  the  College  lads  except  what  they  could 
make  for  themselves.  The  New  Haven  townspeople  had 
never  recovered  from  the  financial  ruin  of  the  famous  Dela- 
ware enterprises,  and,  as  had  happened  at  Saybrook,  had 
never  succeeded  in  carrying  out  the  great  trading  ambitions 
of  the  settlers.  The  long  effort  to  bring  trade  to  the  port, 
which  at  one  time  nearly  became  successful,  had  now  ebbed 
again,  so  that  there  were  now  but  two  coasting  vessels  and 
a  West  Indiaman  in  the  harbor,  besides  a  handful  of  smaller 
craft.  The  people,  as  we  have  seen,  were  all  farmers  or 
small  merchants  and  artisans,  though  there  was  a  doctor 
(one  Mather)  living  on  lower  Elm  Street.  There  were 
no  lawyers  in  those  artless  days,  and  the  magistrates  and 
justices  and  judges  had  to  be  selected  for  common  sense  and 
what  smattering  of  English  common  law  and  knowledge  of 
the  Assembly's  acts  they  could  muster. 

Yet  these  primitive  New  Englanders  managed  to  keep 
abreast  of  the  fashions  of  the  day,  so  far  as  they  could  by 
the  occasional  voyages  to  Boston  of  that  Captain  Browne's 
"Speedwell"  which  we  have  heard  of  on  previous  pages. 
The  New  Haven  folks'  relations  to  this  seafaring  Captain 
have  recently  come  to  light  in  the  pages  of  his  old  account 
book.  These  were  largely  in  the  nature  of  barter,  the  towns- 
people loading  Captain  Browne's  little  vessel  with  wheat 
and  flour  from  the  East  Rock  mill;  corn,  rye,  and  oats  from 
the  many  farms;  pork  and  bacon,  a  little  beef,  and  much 
fresh  butter;  peas  and  beans,  nuts,  beeswax  and  honey,  and 
sometimes  some  eggs  (a  basket  or  two  of  which  occasion- 
ally went  on  to  that  Madam  Knight  whom  we  have  seen 


The  New  Haven  of  Timothy  Cutler        389 

visiting  friends  In  New  Haven).  Numerous  furs  were  in 
these  consignments,  and  there  were  usually  some  bales  of  flax 
or  wool  sent  on,  with  maybe  some  linen  or  worsted  cloths, 
roughly  manufactured  at  Tutor  Johnson's  father's  place  at 
Guilford,   or  by  the   several 

"clothiers"     living     in     New     /7     />  /{ H). 

Haven.  Treasurer  Ailing  /j^ ryrrx,  (^U^rVQp 
had  been  a  purchaser,  as  we  ^-^ 

have  seen,  for  the  Saybrook  establishment  from  Captain 
Browne,  and  he,  as  well  as  all  of  the  prominent  people  in 
the  town,  used  the  Captain's  services. 

Something  of  the  flavor  of  these  ancient  Yale  days  comes 
back  to  us  In  the  Items  which  Captain  Browne  set  down  in 
his  old  account  book.  He  brings  back  to  the  village  from 
the  Boston  emporium  such  things  as  silver  spoons,  silver 
shoe-buckles,  silk  handkerchiefs.  Ivory  combs,  brass  kettles, 
writing  paper,  silver  chains,  gauze  fans,  jackknives,  whale- 
bone for  the  ladles,  pins,  gloves,  sugar,  wineglasses,  ribbon, 
green  wines,  tankards,  hornbooks  for  the  small  people,  rum, 
felt  hats  for  the  boys,  looking-glasses,  broadcloth  suits  for 
the  gentlemen,  periwigs,  and  castor  hats  of  rabbit's  fur. 
The  Derby  minister.  Rev.  Joseph  Moss,  but  recently  assist- 
ing In  the  College  teaching,  Is  a  good  purchaser  from  Cap- 
tain Browne.  He  buys,  so  the  ancient  account  book  shows, 
6,000  nails  for  his  parsonage,  a  pint  of  wine,  the  usual 
minister's  broadcloth  coat  and  black  crepe  gown,  a  Bible, 
a  "great  journal,"  a  barrel  of  gunpowder,  200  pounds  of 
small  shot,  half  a  grindstone,  a  brass  kettle  costing  £5  3s., 
some  glass  bottles,  a  glass  Inkhorn,  a  trunk  with  drawers  In 
It,  Madeira  wines,  a  small  book  called  "The  Clerk's  Guide" 
(which  he  needed  In  order  to  brush  up  for  his  duties  as 
Town  Clerk  of  Derby),  and  Henry  Care's  "English  Liber- 
ties," a  ponderously-compiled  and  amazingly  dull  legal  di- 
gest.    Several  stores.  In  one  of  which  Madam  Knight  will 


390 


The  Beginnings  of  Yale 


JMMn 
Mtafm 


S>«/  3><>//cr 


■  COUEGE- 


Sam  MiK 
Sam  Ytomait 


^^t/Jium 


^c. 


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u  C-  •^H'  mam 

J>riso>y 


^e  mar^t.9lace 


SfnaMlK 


\S(M>ks 
CordtKimtr 


1  My^^rerMjit 


'^viifi'eld 


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iBa// 


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:^tvX4/'yes 


be  recalled  as  observing  the  country  people  making  their 
awkward  purchases,  were  scattered  about  the  New  Haven 
of  this  day,  where  the  College  scholars  on  their  infrequent 
off-afternoons  might  purchase  paper  and  jackknives. 

So  that,  on  the  whole,  the  New  Haven  folk  of  this  period 
lived  at  least  a  comfortable  life,  as  Madam  Knight  found 
that  they  did,  and,  provincial  as  it  was,  not  entirely  out  of 


The  New  Haven  of  Timothy  Cutler         391 

the  fashions  of  Samuel  Sewall's  Boston.  The  houses  of  the 
more  easy-circumstanced  of  these  villagers  of  Rector 
Cutler's  few  New  Haven  years,  were  quite  comfortable 
homes.  Roaring  log  fires  heated  them  and  homemade 
"white-amber"  candles  and  imported  whale-oil  lanterns 
lighted  them.  Each  house  of  the  better  class  had  its  heavy 
homemade  furniture,  with  here  and  there  an  imported 
Jacobean  chair  or  Dutch  table,  its  pewter  mugs  and  platters 
and  tankards,  its  warming  pans  for  cold  winter  nights,  and 
its  costly  brass  kettles.  There  were  no  carpets  or  rugs,  to 
be  sure,  but  the  thick  oak-slab  floors  were  properly  sanded. 
The  great  kitchen  fireplace,  with  its  yawning  cavern  where 
the  great  kettles  and  little  kettles  swung  from  cranes,  was 
the  center  of  the  family  life.  Here  the  townsfolk  had  their 
neighborly  gossip  and  wines  of  evenings,  and  here  the  occa- 
sional dropper-in  among  the  older  men  had  his  pipe  of 
tobacco.  Rough  woolen  suits,  worsted  stockings,  broad- 
brimmed  fur  or  felt  hats,  low  shoes  and  buckles,  and  great 
capes,  were  the  usual  garments,  except  on  gala  occasions, 
of  the  men.  The  women  of  the  little  village  kept  Captain 
Browne  busy  picking  out  fans,  and  thimbles,  and  silver 
chains,  and  rings  and  lockets  for  them  In  the  Boston  market. 
But  neither  the  men  nor  the  women  appear  to  have  bought 
many  books.  Bibles  and  hornbooks  were  brought  on  In 
plenty,  some  of  them  "painted"  (with  rough-colored  pic- 
tures). And  primers  come  for  the  children.  But  of 
general  literature,  as  was  the  case  a  generation  earlier,  there 
appears  to  have  been  a  great  dearth  In  Captain  Browne's 
accounts.  John  Flavel's  "Husbandry  Spiritualized"  (a 
famous  English  Presbyterian  book  of  the  day)  is  imported 
by  one  trader;  an  old  salt  ventures  to  invest  In  "The 
Mariner's  Compass";  the  "Wit's  Cabinet,  a  Companion 
for  Gentlemen  and  Ladies,"  a  highly  moral  compilation 
(containing    much    useful    information    on    palmistry    and 


392  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

dreams),  appear  among  the  items;  some  "Latin  books"  are 
bought  by  Samuel  Mix,  probably  for  his  boy  of  eleven;  a 
copy  of  Bunyan's  immortal  book  is  ordered,  and  "The 
Experienced  Secretary." 

If  the  literary  taste  of  New  Haven  from  1707  to 
17 1 6, — the  period  covered  by  Captain  Browne's  entries, — 
Is  to  be  judged  by  them,  I  imagine  that  very  httle  may  be 
said  for  it.  But  Connecticut  folk  generally,  as  we  have  seen, 
were  not  readers,  and,  besides  the  Scriptures,  their  psalm 
books  and  occasional  copies  of  "sarmons"  published  by  the 
great  men  of  the  Boston  pulpits  and  now  and  then  of 
London,  about  define  their  intellectual  efforts.  It  was  left 
to  the  ministers  in  charge  of  the  new  College,  and  to  the 
ambitious  scholars  under  them,  to  undertake  the  more 
exalted  flights  in  the  ancient  languages  and  the  Scriptural 
commentaries  that  comprised  the  cultivated  provincial's 
education  of  the  day. 

Captain  Browne's  Boston  purchases  of  Bibles,  catechisms, 
and  hornbooks  for  his  New  Haven  patrons,  was,  I  fancy, 
more  significant  of  the  church  situation  in  the  Colony  at  this 
time  than  might  appear  on  the  surface  of  things. 

For,  in  spite  of  Cotton  Mather's  flowery  introduction  of 
the  Connecticut  folk  to  Governor  Yale,  the  religious  condi- 
tion among  them  was  again  at  that  low  ebb  which  was  the 
case  when  James  Pierpont  was  called  to  John  Davenport's 
pulpit.  We  have  seen  how  General  Assembly  and  Town 
Court  orders  had  been  passed  to  stem  this  religious  decline 
in  Pierpont's  day,  and  how  the  Collegiate  School  had  been 
projected  by  Pierpont  for  the  same  general  purpose  as  well 
as  for  other  reasons.  We  have  seen  how  that  School  had 
been  given  a  Congregational  creed  in  the  Saybrook  Plat- 
form, through  Pierpont's  Influence,  and  how  that  Platform 
had  been  expected  to  bring  order  out  of  chaos  In  the  Inter- 
relations  of  the   churches.     All   of  these   enterprises  had 


The  New  Haven  of  Timothy  Cutler        393 

formed  themselves  about  the  common  desire  of  the  ministers 
and  lay  leaders  of  the  Colony,  to  hold  Connecticut  steadfast 
to  the  traditional  theology  and  the  stern  morals  that  were 
disappearing  in  Massachusetts. 

But  matters  had  not  turned  out  that  way.  The  disturbing 
conditions  of  Queen  Anne's  War  had  reacted  on  the  reli- 
gious state  of  the  people,  and  had  brought  it,  by  17 14, — in 
spite  of  the  Saybrook  Platform, — to  so  low  a  pass  that 
legislative  action  had  again  been  necessary.  And  so,  in  that 
year,  the  Assembly  had  requested  the  Colony  ministers  to 
report  on  the  religious  situation  among  their  congregations. 
The  receipt  of  a  lugubriously  gloomy  reply  had  resulted,  the 
next  year,  in  a  blanket  act  by  the  Assembly,  "for  the  pre- 
venting of  such  decays  in  religion."  This  Act  had  again 
demanded  the  strict  enforcement  of  the  old  and  neglected 
laws  regarding  primary  education,  for  the  "better  observa- 
tion" of  the  Sabbath,  and  against  "lying,"  "swearing," 
"tippling  and  drunkenness."  And  it  emphatically  ordered 
that  the  various  town  officers  should  "make  diligent  inquiry 
of  all  householders,  how  they  are  stored  with  bibles."  If 
"any  such  householder  be  found  without  one  bible,"  pro- 
ceeded this  statute,  "then  the  selectman  shall  warn  the  said 
householder  forthwith  to  procure  one,"  to  the  end  that  "all 
families  be  furnished  with  a  suitable  number  of  orthodox 
catechisms,  and  other  good  books  of  practical  godliness," 
with  special  reference  to  their  preparation  of  their  readers 
for  "that  great  duty,  the  Lord's  supper." 

So,  just  before  the  Saybrook  Collegiate  School  had  be- 
come Yale  College  at  New  Haven,  we  find  that  there  had 
been  a  Colony-wide  effort  on  the  part  of  the  ministers  and 
legislators  to  bring  the  religious  state  of  the  people  back 
to  that  orthodoxy  from  which  Massachusetts  was  rapidly 
slipping  and  to  the  stern  moral  conduct  of  their  forefathers, 


394  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

and  that  Bibles  and  catechisms  and  hornbooks  for  the 
children  had  been  purchased  in  numbers. 

Nor  had  this  effort  to  regain  the  religious  plane  of  an 
earlier  day  stopped  there.    One  of  the  chief  reasons  for  the 
continued  attention  by  the  Assembly  during  these  years  to 
^      iO     /?         ^^     affairs     of     the     Collegiate 
^Ji/hi^ObtTLU    (^^Mt/Lm^     School  had  been  that  upon  that 
\-y  institution  the  Colony  leaders  had 

based  their  chief  hopes  for  a  new  generation  of  orthodox 
religious  leaders,  both  in  the  pulpit  and  public  life.  I  do  not 
doubt  that  Governor  Saltonstall,  who  was  one  of  the  most 
vigorously  devout  men  of  the  day,  had  interested  himself  in 
the  School's  affairs  very  largely  for  this  reason.  As  we  have 
seen,  though  not  a  Trustee,  he  had  even  been  willing  to 
assume  the  mantle  of  James  Pierpont's  constructive  leader- 
ship of  it.  He  had  succeeded  in  this.  The  new  Yale  College 
hall  now  stood  in  all  its  cerulean  glory  among  the  ancient 
trees  across  the  lane  from  the  Market-place  upper  corner. 
All  of  the  formerly  divided  groups  of  scholars  were  housed 
in  it.  He  had  used  his  official  authority  to  bring  over  the 
Saybrook  books.  The  Rev.  Timothy  Cutler,  young  and 
ambitious,  and  renowned  for  his  scholarship  and  his  preach- 
ing, had  finally  been  chosen  by  the  Trustees  for  its  Rector. 
Governor  Saltonstall  no  doubt  believed  that  his  leadership 
in  the  affairs  of  Yale  College  had  finally  brought  forth  the 
dawn  of  a  new  day.  And  the  Trustees  of  that  college,  com- 
fortable in  their  thoughts  of  the  reestablished  school  under 
Rector  Cutler,  may  well  have  had  the  same  hopefulness,  and 
have  proceeded  again  to  attend  to  their  congregations' 
spiritual  needs  without  worry  over  the  School  for  the  first 
time  in  the  history  of  their  ambitious  undertaking.  To 
them,  the  great  London  book  collection  now  properly  set 
forth  upon  the  shelves  of  the  new  Yale  Library  was  to  be 
the   start   of   a   new   intellectual   interest   in   the   orthodox 


The  New  Haven  of  Timothy  Cutler        395 

support  of  their  own  devoutly-accepted  Calvinism.  Yale 
College,  under  Timothy  Cutler,  was  to  become,  in  truth,  to 
the  Connecticut  of  the  i8th  Century,  what  Harvard  College 
had  been  to  New  England  in  the  17th. 


CHAPTER  XI 
THE  RESULT  OF  THE  BOOKS 


UT  as  often  happens  In  this  world  of 
ours,  things  do  not  always  turn  out  as 
we  have  planned.  Though  affairs, 
religiously  speaking,  settled  down  into 
more  or  less  the  old  channel  a  few 
years  later,  a  flurry  now  came  on  which 
must  have  astonished  the  good  Con- 
gregational Trustees  of  the  now  re- 
established College  and  produced  a  great  commotion 
generally. 

Curiously  enough,  this  flurry  was  the  direct  result  of  the 
receipt  of  Jeremiah  Dummer's  great  English  library,  now 
stored  in  the  new  College  hall. 

These  books  had  now  been  in  the  possession  of  the  Col- 
lege for  six  years.  Yet  they  had  hardly  been  opened,  so 
aloof  from  the  currents  of  the  modern  intellectual  world 
that  was  growing  up  in  England  were  the  Connecticut 
leaders  of  this  day.  And  this  is  a  curious  thing.  For  among 
the  Dummer  books  were  the  published  products  of  the  most 
progressive  thinking  of  the  times,  at  least  so  far  as  con- 
cerned theology  and  science, — the  two  all-embracing  intel- 
lectual interests  of  the  period.  Stored  in  a  remote  house  in 
Saybrook,  there  had  been  no  effort  to  make  use  of  them  until 
the  Trustees  had  happened  to  think  of  them  and  request 
their  removal  to  New  Haven.  They  had  been  received,  and 
shelved,  and  that  had  been  the  end  of  them.     According  to 


The  Result  of  the  Books  397 

Tutor  Johnson,  they  had  become  as  If  they  were  not,  to  the 
Colony  generally  and  to  the  College  in  particular.  The 
black-gowned  ministers  In  charge  of  them  had  doubtless 
viewed  with  pride  their  Imposing  array  on  the  Saybrook 
parsonage's  bookshelves.  With  a  gratified  knowledge  that 
the  great  Calvlnistic  authorities  were  well  represented,  the 
Trustees  had  passed  over  the  light  frivolities  of  Dick  Steele, 
the  ponderous  volumes  of  current  English  Episcopalian 
theology,  and  the  unintelligible  tomes  of  the  hardly  known 
Isaac  Newton,  and  had  returned  to  their  own  small  collec- 
tions of  Latin  commentaries  and  mediaeval  •  Calvlnistic 
writers,  quite  satisfied  about  them. 

But,  as  It  had  happened,  a  small  group  of  students  and 
young  graduates  had  undertaken  a  somewhat  surreptitious 
examination  of  these  books  that  the  Trustees  did  not  bother 
over.  These  students  were  Jared  Eliot,  1706,  now  settled 
at  Killingworth ;  John  Hart,  1703,  of  East  Guilford; 
Samuel  Whittlesey,  1705,  of  Wallingford;  James  Wetmore, 
of  North  Haven,  Daniel  Browne  and  Samuel  Johnson,  the 
two  Yale  College  Tutors,  all  three  of  the  Class  of  17 14. 
Going  over  to  Saybrook  to  read  the  books,  and  then  to  the 
new  College  library  In  New  Haven,  this  little  group  of 
men, — all  Congregational  ministers, — were  to  find  them- 
selves, shortly  after   1720, 

arriving   at   an   Intellectual      A     ^""^^         ^^  <^^_ 
and  religious  point  to  which    \/^l/irt4        Oi^Cr^Z^.^^ 
it  had  hardly  been  expected 

by  the  devout  Trustees  that  the  books  would  bring  anybody. 
It  will  serve  our  purpose  best  to  follow  what  now  occurred 
In  the  case  of  Tutor  Johnson,  who  has  left  us  the  only 
account  we  have  of  what  happened. 

We  have  some  time  since  found  this  young  gentleman 
studying  some  of  these  volumes  privately  in  his  lodgings. 
Poring  over  them  under  his  flickering  candle  of  evenings 


398  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

after  his  college  day's  labors  were  over,  young  Johnson 
seems  to  have  immersed  himself  in  the  study  of  them. 
Circumscribed,  as  he  had  been,  by  the  limits  of  the  education 
meted  out  to  the  Collegiate  School  youths  at  Saybrook, 
this  young  scholar  was  now  making  up  for  lost  time  with  a 
vengeance.  He  had,  so  he  says,  been  graduated  from  Say- 
brook  with  a  very  large  conceit  of  his  intellectual  attain- 
ments. He  had  drawn  up  an  elaborate  system  "of  all  the 
parts  of  learning  within  his  reach,"  and  considered  himself 
a  learned  man.  But  his  first  plunge  into  Sir  Isaac  Newton 
had  shattered  this  high  opinion  of  himself,  and,  with  an 
intellectual  energy  that  came  from  the  needs  of  his  starved 
mind,  he  had  reconstructed  his  notions  of  the  universe 
and  therefore  his  theology.  He  seemed  to  himself,  imme- 
diately this  great  horizon  dawned  upon  him,  "suddenly 
emerging  out  of  the  glimmer  of  twilight  into  the  full  sun- 
shine of  open  day." 

Something  of  the  same  sort  had  now  happened  to  John- 
son's classmate,  Daniel  Browne.  When  the  two  friends 
were  brought  together  as  the  first  Yale  College  Tutors, 
they  threw  themselves  enthusiastically  into  the  new  learning. 
To  the  old  hidebound  Collegiate  School  curriculum  of  Dr. 
Ames  and  the  classics  and  Rector  Pierson's  primitive 
"Physicks,"  they  now  added  lectures  to  the  Seniors  in  Locke 
and  Newton,  with  the  books  of  these  new  philosophers  on 
their  tables  to  read  from.  "Till  now,"  writes  Johnson's 
biographer,  "the  Ptolemaic  system  of  the  world  was  as 
strongly  believed  as  the  holy  scriptures;  but  they  soon  were 
able  to  overthrow  it,  and  to  establish  on  its  ruins  the  doc- 
trines of  Copernicus."  For  some  reason  or  other,  the  rever- 
end Trustees  appear  not  to  have  realized  this  tremendous 
departure  from  their  School's  teachings.  If  they  did,  they 
overlooked  it  as  harmless.  But  the  students  received  the 
new  learning  with  alacrity  and  in  one  signal  instance,   at 


The  Result  of  the  Books  399 

least  (in  Jonathan  Edwards'  case),  it  was  to  produce  im- 
portant results  for  an  even  wider  audience  than  New  Haven. 


II 

And  there  was  another  element  in  the  situation  that  was 
now  forming  at  the  College  among  this  group  of  young 
Congregational  ministers.  We  have  seen  how  Samuel 
Johnson,  reading  a  chance  English  prayer  book  at  his  home 
in  Guilford  as  a  young  boy,  had  come  to  feel  sympathetic 
toward  the  Church  of  England  ritual  and  discipline.  Timo- 
thy Cutler,  arriving  at  Stratford  in  1709,  had  found  several 
of  the  leaders  in  that  town  leaning  toward  the  Church  of 
England,  as  the  result  of  the  founding  of  an  Episcopal 
Church  there  by  the  missionary  Muirson.  From  later 
developments,  it  would  appear  that  Cutler  felt  himself 
moving  in  that  heretical  direction  as  time  passed,  and  that 
the  opportunity  to  leave  the  Congregational  pulpit  that  the 
Yale  College  Rectorship  offered  him,  as  well  as  to  read  the 
Dummer  books,  had  something  to  do  with  his  acceptance. 
However  that  may  be,  these  young  men  (now,  with  Daniel 
Browne,  the  three  resident  heads  of  Yale  College)  were  by 
1720,  at  the  latest,  experiencing  the  first  throes  of  a  seismic 
intellectual  revulsion  from  the  traditional  Calvinism  of  the 
institution,  and  of  the  Connecticut  Colony  itself,  and  dimly 
foreseeing  a  change  of  heart  toward  the  Church  of  England. 

I  suppose  that  this  change  was  an  extremely  important 
personal  matter  for  that  early  day  in  the  i8th  Century.  If 
it  came  about  very  gradually  among  this  small  group  of 
scholars,  it  is  certainly  true  that  it  resulted,  to  a  very  large 
extent,  from  their  reading  of  the  contemporaneous  English 
divines  whose  heretical  books  the  Trustees  had  unwittingly 
placed  on  the  College  library  shelves.  Little  did  the  con- 
tented Trustees,  attending  to  their  own  flocks'  Calvinistic 


400  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

orthodoxy,  remote  from  New  Haven,  know  of  this  surrepti- 
tious proceeding.  Into  their  Garden  of  Eden,  planted  with 
sound  Calvinistic  vegetation  for  the  orthodox  consumption 
of  their  Rector  and  Tutors,  the  serpent  of  the  Church  of 
England  had  appeared,  and  was  tempting  their  Adam  to  eat 
of  the  Tree  of  Knowledge.  Jeremiah  Dummer's  report 
of  old  Governor  Yale's  offhand  notion  that  a  little  more 
learning  might  bring  Puritan  Connecticut  into  the  fold  of 
that  mother  Church  which  his  own  career  had  so  adorned, 
was  not  so  far  from  a  possibility  as  it  might  have  seemed  to 
the  Trustees  on  hearing  of  it.  And  Dummer  had  lost  no 
chance  to  plant  that  tree.  The  long-winded  Barrow,  Bishop 
Patrick,  the  rather  bigoted  Dr.  Robert  South,  Bishop  Sharp, 
Dean  Sherlock  of  St.  Paul's,  Whitby  the  Arminian,  and 
Archbishop  Tillotson, — the  great  English  Churchmen  of  the 
decade  just  passed, — were  all  on  the  shelves  in  the  new 
College  hall,  and  their  heretical  doctrines  open  to  him  who 
ran.  And,  as  this  small  group  of  Congregational  ministers 
read  them,  their  Congregationahsm  gradually  slipped  off, 
and  Episcopal  robes  fell  upon  their  shoulders. 

HI 

The  beginnings  of  Episcopacy  in  Connecticut  had  been 
made  some  eighteen  years  before  this  time,  when,  as  we 
have  seen,  the  London  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the 
Gospel  in  Foreign  Parts  had  been  chartered  by  William  and 
Mary,  and  an  American  missionary  sent  over  in  the  person 
of  George  Keith,  the  former  Quaker.  Keith  had  found 
the  Connecticut  of  that  time  a  unanimously  "dissenting" 
community.  Israel  Chauncy's  little  town  of  Stratford,  how- 
ever, shortly  afterwards  had  an  Episcopal  group,  and,  when 
the  New  York  Church  of  England  leaders  sent  one  Colonel 
Heathcote  in   1706  on  a  missionary  journey  along  Long 


The  Result  of  the  Books  401 

Island  Sound,  he  had  found  a  hospitable  welcome  there 
among  them.  The  orthodox  Congregational  people,  how- 
ever, fought  off  further  Episcopal  efforts.  Matters  came  to 
such  a  climax  that  a  staunch  deacon  of  the  Stratford  council 
stood  out  in  the  pubHc  highway  and  forbade  entrance  to  the 
Episcopal  services,  threatening  all  who  went  with  fines  of 
five  pounds.  The  natural  result  of  such  opposition  as  this 
was  a  wave  of  Church  of  England  interest  all  through  Fair- 
field County.  The  immediate  successor  to  old  Mr.  Chauncy 
had  gone  over  to  the  Church.  He  had  been  dismissed  and 
young  Timothy  Cutler,  fresh  from  Boston  and  highly  rec- 
ommended by  the  Boston  orthodox  ministers  for  his 
abilities,  had  been  called  to  that  pulpit.  In  the  meantime 
the  Assembly  had  passed  their  Act  of  Toleration,  after 
having  tied  down  the  Colony  to  the  Congregational  creed 
and  loosely  organized  the  churches  in  the  Saybrook  Plat- 
form. From  that  moment  Episcopacy  advanced  steadily 
and  unobtrusively  throughout  the  coast  towns,  until  its 
famous  irruption  took  place  in  the  very  center  of  the  Colony 
College  itself  that  had  been  founded  for  the  purpose  of 
carrying  on  the  traditional  Congregationalism. 

For  the  result  of  the  private  reading  of  the  Dummer 
books  by  the  small  group  of  Collegiate  School  graduates 
whom  I  have  mentioned,  had  been  a  revulsion  of  sentiment 
among  them  against  the  old  theology  and  church  organiza- 
tion and  toward  the  ancient  Church  of  England.  The  new 
Rector  had  joined  this  group  and  become  its  leader.  But 
the  change  on  their  part  was  gradual.  Rector  Cutler, 
preaching  to  the  General  Assembly  in  October,  17 19,  was 
at  that  time  so  far  from  his  final  opinions  that  his  sermons 
pleased  the  most  conservative  of  the  Colony  leaders  and 
received  the  unusual  compliment  of  printing.  It  was  through 
his  suggestion,  probably,  that  the  Yale  College  scholars  were 
given  regular  sittings  in  the  New  Haven  Meeting-house, 


402  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

where  they  occupied  "the  northeast  half  of  the  fore  gallery" 
and  annually  paid  a  shilling  apiece  to  hear  the  Rev.  Joseph 
Noyes  preach.^  Throughout  the  next  two  years  there  was 
no  indication,  so  far  as  the  public  and  the  Trustees  knew, 
of  any  coming  difficulties.    But  these  were  brewing. 

Tutor  Samuel  Johnson  had  resigned  his  office  at  the  close 
of  Rector  Cutler's  first  year  to  become  the  minister  of  the 
West  Haven  Congregational  Church.  His  diary  shows 
that  he  had  scruples  over  the  method  of  ordination  which 
he  received,  but  that  he  accepted  the  situation,  near-Epis- 
copalian as  he  was.  His  classmate,  James  Wetmore,  had 
a  year  before  become  the  North  Haven  minister.  He,  also, 
had  shown  a  disposition  not  to  fall  in  with  the  Saybrook 
Platform  method  of  ordination,  and  he  appears  not  to  have 
been  ordained  in  the  now  customary  Congregational  way. 

The  coming  storm  was  thus  rising.  And  we  find,  from 
Samuel  Johnson's  manuscript  account  of  these  days,  that 
this  was  due  to  the  following  circumstances,  of  which  a  hint 
or  two  may  have  been  given  above.  As  the  small  group  of 
readers  of  the  new  books  had  discussed  them  from  time  to 
time,  the  impression  had  been  growing  on  them  that  there 
was  but  little  resemblance  to  the  Primitive  Church  in  Con- 
necticut Congregationalism.  The  more  they  read  in  the 
English  divines  that  Dummer  had  seen  to  it  were  included 
in  the  College  library,  the  more  these  young  Congrega- 
tionalists  found  themselves  losing  faith  in  the  theology  and 
church  methods  of  their  older  contemporaries.  When  they 
had  arrived  at  this  disturbing  state  of  mind  (for  it  should 
be  realized  how  serious  a  matter  it  was  in  those  days  for 
established    young    Congregational    ministers,    with    their 

1  This  practice  was  maintained  until  the  controversy  between  the  two 
Congregational  factions  in  the  "Great  Awakening"  resulted  in  Rector 
Clap's  establishment  of  a  separate  Yale  College  Church,  which  has  con- 
tinued to  the  present  day. 


The  Result  of  the  Books  403 

careers  before  them,  to  change  their  church  views)  they  seem 
to  have  set  about  a  rigid  reexamination  of  the  entire  subject. 
Gurdon  Saltonstall,  when  a  young  man,  had  pursued  this 
same  course  and  come  out  a  "rigid"  Calvinist.  But  John- 
son, Cutler,  Wetmore,  and  Browne,  with  their  friends  Hart, 
Eliot,  and  Whittlesey  to  a  lesser  degree,  went  through  the 
process  and  came  out  Episcopalians.  They  reread  the  tra- 
ditional Calvinists,  such  as  Hoadly  and  Calamy,  and 
they  then  reread  King's  "Inquiry"  and  Slater's  "Original 
Draught,"  and  Potter's  "Church  Government," — all  in  the 
College  library.  And  Samuel  Johnson  as  a  kind  of  commit- 
tee of  one  restudied  the  early  Church  fathers  in  the  original 
tongues  and  reported  his  results.  The  upshot  of  this  intel- 
lectual upheaval  was  the  definite  opinion  on  the  part  of  these 
young  men  that  the  Episcopal  Church  was  the  lineal  de- 
scendant of  the  Apostles,  that  the  priesthood  could  only 
come  down  through  the  Bishops  and  head  of  the  Church, 
and  that  ordination  was  unlawful  unless  given  by  "a  Bishop 
at  the  head  of  the  Presbytery."  Shortly  after  this  great  de- 
cision, young  Johnson  rode  over  to  Stratford,  where  one 
George  Pigot  had  been  settled  as  the  Episcopal  clergyman, 
talked  matters  over  with  him  and  invited  him  to  meet  him 
and  his  friends  in  the  College  library  at  New  Haven.  The 
group  which  we  have  named  met  Pigot  there,  and  listened  to 
his  arguments  for  Episcopacy.  While  doing  no  more  than 
declaring  their  keen  interest  in  his  statements,  they  let  him 
understand  (as  would  appear  from  the  report  that  Pigot  at 
once  sent  to  England)  that  they  were  prepared  to  be  or- 
dained in  that  Church  as  soon  as  they  could  find  that  "they 
will  be  supported  at  home." 

IV 

This  was  sometime  in  June,  1722.    The  news  of  it  must 
have  leaked  out,  for  rumors  at  once  began  to  spread  that 


404  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

there  were  heretical  tendencies  cropping  out  In  the  new  Yale 
College.  One  Joseph  Morgan,  traveling  through  the 
Colony,  hurriedly  wrote  to  Cotton  Mather  about  It,  report- 
ing that  "Armlnlan  books  are  cried  up  In  Yale  College  for 
eloquence  and  learning,  and  Calvinism  despised  for  the 
contrary;  and  none  have  the  courage  to  see  It  redressed." 
Samuel  Johnson  had  by  this  time  become  famous  for  the 
eloquence  with  which  he  conducted  the  little  Congrega- 
tional church  services  In  West  Haven.  So  famous  had  be- 
come his  prayers  that  large  numbers  of  devout  Congrega- 
tlonallsts  were  attending  his  Sabbath-day  meetings  to  hear 
them.  It  is  a  bit  amusing  to  read  in  Johnson's  own  account 
of  these  days  that  these  prayers  were  not  his  own,  and 
extemporaneous  as  was  the  custom  of  the  day,  but  were 
taken  from  the  Church  of  England  ritual. 

The  rumors  which  had  been  flying  about  concerning  the 
orthodoxy  of  the  College  heads  must  have  come  to  the 
attention  of  the  Trustees  at  about  this  time,  as  to  Governor 
Saltonstall.  Added  to  the  local  talk  there  had  come  a  report 
from  Boston  that  a  money  collection  was  going  forward 
there  to  build  a  Church  of  England  house  of  worship,  and 
that  Rector  Cutler  was  expected  to  be  Its  first  clergyman. 
The  Trustees  must  have  been  worried,  and  that  worry  must 
have  been  brought  to  a  head  when,  closing  his  Commence- 
ment prayer  that  September,  Rector  Cutler  boldly  ended 
with  the  well-known  Episcopal  supplication,  "And  let  all 
the  people  say,  Amen." 

Immediately  after  this  ceremony,  the  Trustees  met  In  the 
College  library. 

That  they  were  mystified  and  astounded  by  the  reports 
and  by  Rector  Cutler's  astonishing  departure  from  tradition 
goes  without  saying.  And  their  agitation  could  hardly  have 
been  diminished  by  the  number  of  people  who,  It  is  said,  had 
come   to   New   Haven   for   the   occasion   "expecting   some 


The  Result  of  the  Books  405 

strange  occurrences."  This  meeting  of  the  Trustees  had 
been  asked,  it  seems,  by  Rector  Cutler  and  Tutor  Browne, 
and  the  others  in  the  group  of  men  who  had  been  coming 
around  to  the  Episcopalian  viewpoint.  Rector  Cutler  intro- 
duced Johnson  and  Browne,  Wetmore,  Hart,  Eliot,  and 
Whittlesey  to  the  Trustees  and  to  the  large  number  of 
Colony  ministers  who  also  crowded  into  the  room.  The 
question  was  at  once  propounded  by  these  young  men,  led 
by  Cutler  and  Johnson,  whether  the  Connecticut  method  of 
ordination  was  a  lawful  one,  and  the  announcement  made 
that  all  of  them  were  considering  the  matter  of  going  over 
to  the  Church  of  England.  The  astonished  Trustees  ques- 
tioned each  of  the  group  in  turn  as  to  their  views  on  this 
suddenly-proposed  proceeding,  and,  instead  of  accepting  the 
situation  (as  possibly  the  applicants  had  hoped),  "expressed 
the  utmost  grief  and  concern."  The  declaration  of  views 
of  the  young  heretics  was  demanded  in  writing.  This  was 
promptly  given,  all  signing  it.  The  Trustees  ordered  a 
special  meeting  for  a  month  later,  gave  the  young  men  the 
opportunity  in  the  meanwhile  to  change  their  opinions,  and 
adjourned  the  meeting,  no  doubt  in  the  midst  of  the  greatest 
excitement  that  they  and  the  Congregational  ministers  of  the 
Colony  present  had  ever  experienced. 

Events  now  came  on  with  a  rush. 

It  is  a  famous  story  how  Governor  Saltonstall,  unwilling 
to  believe  that  a  proper  statement  of  the  Calvinistic  prin- 
ciples to  the  seceding  young  ministers  would  not  land  them, 
as  It  had  landed  him,  on  the  traditional  side,  did  not  wait 
for  this  adjourned  Trustees'  meeting,  but  called  a  public 
debate,  with  himself  as  moderator,  at  which  the  difficulty 
could  be  threshed  out;  how,  at  this  debate,  held  in  the  Col- 
lege library  on  October  16,  Rector  Cutler,  Johnson,  and 
Wetmore  led  the  argument  for  the  Church  of  England,  and 
how  the  Trustees,  floundering  in  unknown  waters,  were  quite 


The  Result  of  the  Books  407 

unable  to  meet  the  standard  Episcopal  arguments  regarding 
Timothy's  "evident  superintendency  of  the  clergy"  at 
Ephesus,  "of  the  Angels  in  the  seven  churches  of  Asia," 
etc.  Faced  by  Samuel  Johnson's  glib  knowledge  of  all  the 
arguments  of  the  great  English  divines  in  the  books  stacked 
on  the  library  shelves  about  them,  the  astounded  Trustees 
could  not  meet  him  at  all  in  his  statements  that  "they  must 
either  receive  Episcopacy  or  reject  infant  baptism  and  the 
first  day  sabbath."  It  would  appear  that  all  the  unfortu- 
nately-ignorant Trustees  could  do,  met  as  they  were  by  the 
words  out  of  the  very  books  they  had  so  unwittingly  placed 
on  the  College  shelves,  was  to  lose  their  tempers.  This  they 
promptly  did,  no  doubt  the  fiery  and  orthodox  John  Daven- 
port leading  in  the  fray.  Nothing  but  "mere  rhetorical 
declamation"  coming  from  the  confused  Trustees,  and  "irri- 
tating remarks"  (which  probably  young  Johnson  replied  to 
as  heatedly).  Governor  Saltonstall  had  to  close  the  debate, 
with  none  of  the  satisfactory  results  he  had  hoped  from  it. 

And  now  the  fat  was  in  the  fire.  The  Collegiate  School 
had  been  founded  to  be  a  bulwark  against  Satan,  "wherein 
youth  may  be  instructed  in  the  arts  and  sciences,  who  through 
the  blessing  of  Almighty  God  may  be  fitted  for  public  em- 
ployment both  in  church  and  civil  state."  It  had  been,  in 
Cotton  Mather's  phrases  to  Elihu  Yale,  "the  seminary  from 
whence  they  expect  the  supply  of  all  their  synagogues."  It 
had  been  founded  to  bring  up  the  oncoming  generations  of 
Connecticut  youths  in  the  traditional  Calvinistic  orthodoxy 
,  of  the  settlers.  And  now,  its  Rector  and  chief  Tutor  had 
been  found  to  be  Episcopalians,  and  undoubtedly  to  have 
been  teaching  the  principles  of  that  ancient  heresy  to  the 
Colony  youth,  abetted  by  a  group  of  its  most  distinguished 
recent  graduates  in  the  neighboring  pulpits.  Connecticut 
orthodoxy  had  escaped  the  Scylla  of  Harvard  Latitudi- 
narianism  only  to  crash  upon  the  Charybdis  of  Episcopacy. 


4o8  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

V 

How  the  Trustees  took  this  situation  may  well  be 
Imagined.  As  President  Woolsey  later  said,  "I  suppose  that 
greater  alarm  would  scarcely  be  awakened  now  if  the  Theo- 
logical Faculty  of  the  College  were  to  declare  for  the 
Church  of  Rome,  avow  their  belief  in  Transubstantiation 
and  pray  to  the  Virgin  Mary." 

The  incident  was  followed  by  a  small  avalanche  of  letters 
from  the  Trustees  to  their  old  Boston  friends  who  had  sup- 
ported them  in  the  founding  of  the  Collegiate  School. 
Joseph  Webb,  of  Fairfield,  describing  how  prominent  men 
had  become  Involved  In  the  affair,  wrote  to  Cotton  Mather: 
"It  is  a  very  dark  day  with  us;  and  we  need  pity,  prayer, 
and  counsel."  John  Davenport  and  Stephen  Buckingham 
wrote  to  their  Boston  friends  of  the  "dark  Providence" 
hanging  over  Connecticut.  It  had  been  a  glorious  past  that 
the  Colony  College  had  had,  they  said  In  this  joint  epistle. 
"But  who  could  have  conjectured  that  its  name,  being  raised 
to  Collegian  Yalense  from  a  Gymnasium  Saybrookense,  It 
should  groan  out  Ichabod,  in  about  three  years  and  a  half 
under  Its  second  rector  so  unlike  the  first,  by  an  unhappy 
election,  set  over  it."  "In  that  Rectors  election  or  confirma- 
tion or  any  act  relating  to  him  the  senior  subscriber  hereof 
.  .  .  never  came,"  devoutly  thanks  John  Davenport.  And 
"how  our  fountain,  hoped  to  have  been  and  continued  the 
repository  of  truth  and  reserve  of  pure  and  sound  principles, 
doctrine,  and  education — shows  itself  In  so  little  a  time  so 
corrupt."  Old  Moses  Noyes,  writing  later  to  Judge  Sewall, 
puts  the  case  of  the  astonished  orthodox  Trustees  even  more 
strongly  to  that  original  framer  of  its  charter.  It  had  all 
happened  because  no  leader  had  followed  James  Plerpont, 
thinks  Noyes  (In  which  he  was  doubtless  right),  and  now 
the  simple  Colony  College,  which  never  should  have  been  set 
up  at  a  metropolis  like  New  Haven,  where  troubles  of  this 


The  Result  of  the  Books  409 

sort  were  likely  to  occur,  was  In  a  bad  way.  "It  was  an 
awful  stroke  of  Providence,"  writes  the  aged  minister  at 
Lyme,  "in  taking  away  Mr.  Pierpont,  .  .  .  and  it  is  much 
more  afflictive  because  our  young  men  are  feared  to  be 
infected  with  Arminian  and  Prelatical  notions.  So  that  it 
is  difficult  to  supply  his  place.  It  was  a  wrong  step,  when 
the  Trustees,  by  the  assistance  of  great  men  [here  a  fine 
rap  at  Governor  Saltonstall]  removed  the  College  at  Say- 
brook,  and  a  worse,  when  they  put  in  Mr.  Cutler  for  Rector. 
The  first  movers  for  a  College  in  Connecticut  alledged  this 
as  a  reason,  because  the  College  at  Cambridge  was  under 
the  Tutorage  of  Latitudinarians;  but  how  well  they  have 
mended  the  event  sadly  manifests.  But  God  is  only  wise, 
and  will  produce  glory  to  his  name  out  of  the  weaknesses 
and  follies  of  men." 

Holding  these  views,  the  action  of  the  Trustees  was 
prompt  and  did  not  wait  for  the  scheduled  adjourned 
meeting. 

The  day  after  the  great  public  debate,  they  "excused" 
Rector  Cutler  "from  all  further  service  as  Rector  of  Yale- 
College,"  accepted  Tutor  Browne's  resignation,  voted  that 
all  future  Rectors  and  Tutors  should  accept  the  Saybrook 
Confession,  and  "particularly  give  satisfaction  of  the  sound- 
ness of  their  faith  in  opposition  to  Arminian  and  prelatical 
corruptions  or  any  other  of  dangerous  consequences  to  the 
purity  and  peace  of  our  churches,"  and  elected  two  new 
Tutors,  James  Pierpont,  the  son  of  the  former  Collegiate 
School  leader  and  a  graduate  of  17 18,  and  William  Smith, 
of  1 7 19,  both  "staunch  Calvinists"  of  the  orthodox  type. 

Rector  Cutler,  Tutor  Browne,  and  Tutor  Samuel  John- 
son had  alone  stood  the  public  test  of  their  new  faith  before 
Governor  Saltonstall,  though  Reverend  Wetmore  was  to 
join  them  afterwards.  Rev.  John  Hart  of  East  Guilford 
meekly  returned  to  the  Congregational  fold,   and  was  to 


4IO  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

finish  out  his  short  life  there,  in  good  standing  in  the  Colony 
churches.  Samuel  Whittlesey  went  back,  chastened  in  spirit, 
to  his  Wallingford  congregation,  repentant  of  his  close 
approach  to  apostasy,  to  live  a  useful  life  as  a  good  Congre- 
gational minister,  and  publish  a  number  of  orthodox  ser- 
mons of  no  particular  consequence  thereafter.  Jared  Eliot 
of  Killingworth  was  to  become,  as  we  have  seen,  "the  first 
physician  of  his  day,"  and  a  scientific  man  of  international 
reputation. 

Rector  Cutler,  Samuel  Johnson,  Daniel  Browne,  and 
James  Wetmore,  however,  went  over  to  the  Church  of 
England. 

Samuel  Johnson  made  some  effort  to  have  his  West 
Haven  congregation  go  over  with  him  to  the  Church,  but 
without  success.  On  November  5,  he  sailed  from  Boston 
with  Timothy  Cutler  and  Daniel  Browne  for  London,  where 
he  received  degrees  at  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  and  was 
appointed  an  Episcopal  missionary.  Returning  to  Connecti- 
cut on  that  errand,  he  became  the  first  settled  Episcopal 
clergyman  in  the  Colony,  came  to  know  that  charmingly- 
visionary  Bishop  Berkeley  of  Rhode  Island  and  was  the 
cause  of  that  eminent  clergyman's  great  gift  to  Yale  (in 
the  curious  belief  that  that  College  might  become  Episco- 
palian). Johnson  afterwards  was  elected  the  first  President 
of  King's  (later  Columbia)  College  at  New  York,  and  later 
in  life  returned  to  Stratford,  where  he  died  in  his  seventy- 
sixth  year,  one  of  the  most  noted  scholars  of  his  day,  its  lead- 
ing American  Episcopalian,  and  one  of  its  best  citizens. 

As  for  the  other  two  heretics,  Daniel  Browne  fell  sick 
from  smallpox  on  his  journey  to  England  and  died  there, 
while  Rector  Cutler  was  properly  ordained  in  the  Church  of 

England,  and  returned  to  New 
3cLftLtO  ^rn)7La-/^>^^     England,    settling    at    Boston, 

where  he  lived  a  long  life  as 


The  Result  of  the  Books  411 

Rector  of  Christ  Church,  embroiled  in  a  steady  series  of 
difficulties  with  Harvard  and  the  Congregational  churches 
of  the  town. 

There  has  been  a  tradition  that  this  defection  of  Timothy 
Cutler  and  his  friends  was  but  a  part  of  a  much  broader 
movement  to  turn  Connecticut  into  a  Church  of  England 
community.  Such  a  scheme,  so  the  story  goes,  had  been 
broached  among  several  "gentlemen  of  considerable  char- 
acter among  the  clergy."  Awaiting  the  outcome  of  the 
Cutler-Johnson  secession,  these  plotters  had  made  "no  open 
profession,"  and  now,  when  the  College  had  promptly 
stamped  it  out  and  "they  saw  that  the  people  would  not 
hear  them,  but  dismissed  them  from  their  service,  they  were 
glad  to  conceal  their  former  purposes  and  to  continue  in 
their  respective  places."  But  I  imagine  that  this  rather 
inglorious  story  was  hardly  within  the  facts.  The  Episco- 
pahan  flurry  of  1722  was  a  personal  matter  with  the  small 
group  of  students  of  the  new  College  books,  and  had  no 
Colony-wide  importance.  A  handful  of  Connecticut  Con- 
gregational ministers,  indeed,  became  Church  of  England 
clergymen, — one  of  them  the  Rev.  Samuel  Seabury,  father 
of  the  future  Episcopal  Bishop  of  that  name  and  Yale 
graduate  of  1748, — but  this  was  a  number  of  years  later. 

While  the  episode  is  not  exactly  within  the  limits  of  these 
chronicles  of  Yale's  beginnings,  the  Church  of  England 
upheaval  in  the  College  in  1722  had  a  little  later  develop- 
ment, brief  reference  to  which  in  this  place  will  serve  to 
tie  up  the  threads  of  the  famous  Cutler  affair.  When  ihe 
first  Episcopal  Church  was  established  in  New  Haven  in 
1750,  there  was  a  great  local  to-do.  President  Clap  took 
drastic  action.  Two  Yale  students,  sons  of  the  minister, 
were  refused  permission  to  attend  their  father's  Church 
services.  Samuel  Johnson,  then  President  of  the  "intended 
College  at  New  York,"  took  up  the  gauntlet  for  the  Episco- 


412  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

palian  students  of  his  old  Connecticut  Colony.  Writing  a 
long  letter  to  President  Clap  of  Yale,  and  thanking  him  for 
his  congratulations  upon  his  own  election  to  King's  College, 
this  first  Connecticut  Church  of  England  leader  agreed  "to 
hold  a  good  correspondence  not  only  as  Colleges  but  as 
Christians,"  providing  the  New  Haven  people  would  "act 
on  the  same  equitable,  catholic,  and  Christian  principles  as 
we  unanimously  propose  to  act  upon,"  by  which  he  meant 
that  Yale  College  should  be  free  to  Episcopalians.  "I  am 
prodigiously  mistalcen,"  writes  Johnson,  "if  you  did  not 
tell  me  it  was  an  allowed  and  settled  rule  with  you  hereto- 
fore." Whereupon  Yale's  old  Tutor  proceeds  to  attack 
Yale  College  for  excluding  "the  people  of  the  Church  be- 
longing to  this  Colony  from  having  the  benefit  of  Public 
education  in  your  College."  "Your  argument,"  he  writes, 
"that  it  is  inconsistent  with  the  original  design  of  the 
founders,  which  was  only  to  provide  ministers  for  your 
churches,"  is  untenable.  Among  the  "founders,"  says  John- 
son, must  be  included  "the  principal  benefactors."  And  he 
mentions  "Mr.  Yale,"  well  known  to  have  been  a  famous 
Church  of  England  pillar,  and  Bishop  Berkeley,  whose 
purpose  he  understood  to  be  a  "catholic"  one  in  giving  his 
great  donation.  This  Johnson  himself  had  secured,  though 
"You,"  he  says  to  President  Clap,  "did  not  think  fit  to  do 
me  this  justice  in  your  History  of  the  College,  though 
humbly  suggested."  Yale  College  should  not  be  restricted 
to  Congregationalists.  "For  God's  sake,"  writes  the  Presi- 
dent of  King's  College  to  the  President  of  Yale,  "do  not 
be  so  severe  to  carry  matters  to  this  pass."  But  President 
Clap  was  obdurate.  A  separate  College  church  was  estab- 
lished, and  the  College  laws  against  attending  outside  ser- 
vices were  rigidly  enforced.  It  was  not  until  a  century  more 
had  passed  that  Episcopalian  students  of  Yale  were  allowed 
full  liberty  to  attend  their  own  Church  services. 


Gufor 
[yonatnan 

\^  QcCvoards 


CHAPTER  XII 


THE  END  OF  AN  ERA 


I 


HE  Episcopalian  irruption  having 
quieted  down,  and  Yale  College  again 
under  theologically-trustworthy  Tutors, 
the  Trustees  proceeded  again  to  make 
a  new  start. 

We  will  recall  that  the  Colony 
General  Assembly,  in  the  Charter  of 
1 701,  had  not  incorporated  the  Colle- 
giate School,  partly  because  it  questioned  its  power  to  do 
so.  Even  if  the  Assembly  had  felt  that  it  had  such  a  power, 
it  would  not  have  exercised  it.  The  general  inclination  of 
the  Colony  leaders  was  to  keep  out  of  sight  so  far  as  Old 


414  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

England  was  concerned,  and  to  enjoy  the  privileges  they 
had  plucked  from  the  burning  and  which  less  fortunate 
Massachusetts  had  been  deprived  of.  But  the  terms  of 
that  original  document  had  been  ambiguous  in  language 
in  some  places  and  troublesome  in  practice  in  others. 
Not  being  incorporated,  the  Trustees  had  all  along  been 
looked  upon  by  the  legislators  as  mere  trustees  or  "partners" 
in  a  private  enterprise  of  general  Colony  interest.  This  had 
been  productive  of  a  continued  paternal  interference  on  the 
part  of  the  General  Assembly.  It  had  resulted  in  the  acts 
of  the  Trustees  becoming  matters  for  public  revision.  As 
the  votes  of  mere  private  trustees,  these  acts  had  been  con- 
sidered illegal  (properly,  so  we  are  told  on  good  modern 
legal  authority) ,  unless  they  were  unanimously  voted. 

We  have  seen  how  this  legal  situation  had  been  a 
stumbling-block  in  the  settlement  of  the  Collegiate  School 
site,  concerning  which  there  had  at  no  time  been  unanimous 
action.  The  Trustees  had  found  it  necessary  to  sign  in  a 
body  all  of  the  minutes  of  each  meeting.  If  any  of  the 
Trustees  were  absent  from  a  meeting,  it  had  been  considered 
necessary  to  send  around  that  paper  for  their  signatures. 
A  Trustee,  apparently,  could  not  resign.  Nor  could  an 
inactive  Trustee  be  succeeded  by  a  more  helpful  one.  The 
result  of  this  had  been  that  the  College  had  been  saddled 
all  these  years  with  old  Samuel  Mather  of  Windsor,  sick 
abed,  at  no  time  in  touch  with  affairs,  apparently  not  the 
least  interested,  of  failing  mind  in  his  old  age,  and  never 
at  any  meeting. 

At  this  juncture  Governor  Saltonstall  was  again  called  to 
the  College's  aid.  An  "Act  in  explanation  of  the  Addition 
to  the  Act  for  erecting  a  Collegiate  School,"  was  drawn  up 
by  him  to  meet  these  troubles  and  passed  by  the  Assembly. 
It  provided  that  a  Trustee  might  resign  or  be  succeeded  by 
another  if  incapacitated;  that  seven  of  the  Trustees  should 


The  End  of  an  Era  415 

constitute  a  quorum,  and  that  thirty  years  instead  of  forty 
was  to  be  the  minimum  age  for  a  Trustee  thereafter.  The 
Rector,  who  legally  had  previously  been  but  a  servant  of 
the  Trustees  (though  Pierson  and  Andrew  had  been  original 
members  of  the  board) ,  was  now  made  a  Trustee  ex  officio. 
Armed  with  this  new  power,  old  Samuel  Mather  was 
promptly  ousted  from  his  place,  and  the  Trustees  began 
proceedings  to  find  some  proper  minister  who  would  accept 
the  Reverend  Cutler's  vacant  Rectorship.  No  eligible  man 
appeared  on  the  horizon,  however,  and  for  the  next  four 
years  the  College  continued  without  a  permanent  head, 
Samuel  Andrew  again  officiating  at  Commencements,  though 
apparently  not  with  his  former  title  pro  tern. 

II 

Just  how  the  College  managed.  In  those  four  years,  to 
get  along  as  an  educational  Institution,  does  not  clearly 
appear  from  the  ancient  records.  Young  Pierpont  and 
Smith  continued  as  the  only  two  resident  officers  until  1724, 
when  their  places  were  taken  by  Robert  Treat,  of  Mllford, 
grandson  of  old  Governor  Treat  of  Andros'  times,  and  by 
Jonathan  Edwards,  both  of  them  well-known  subscribers  to 
the  Saybrook  Confession. 

This  latter  young  scholar,  the  most  brilliant  Yale  College 
graduate  of  his  time  and  In  due  course  to  become  the  most 
distinguished  name  In  the  intellectual  life  of  his  generation, 
had  remained  In  New  Haven  for  two  years  after  his 
graduation  In  1720,  studying  theology  under  the  Rev.  Mr. 
Noyes  and  by  himself.  He  had  then  preached  for  a  while 
to  a  dissenting  Presbyterian  congregation  In  New  York,  and 
had  then  returned  to  his  father's  house  near  Elisha  Williams' 
farm  In  Wethersfield  for  further  private  study.  For  a  year 
he   had   occupied  various   pulpits   about  the    Colony,    and 


4i6  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

refused  the  ministry  at  North  Haven  left  vacant  by  James 
Wetmore's  apostasy  to  the  Church  of  England.  Accepting 
the  senior  Tutorship  at  Yale  College  in  May,  1724,  young 
Edwards  occupied  the  place  for  the  next  two  years,  when 
he  began  that  long  career  at  Northampton  which  is  one  of 
the  great  chapters  in  American  theological  history. 

During  Jonathan  Edwards'  two  years  as  Tutor  at  Yale 
College,  the  conditions  were  such  that  practically  the  entire 
responsibility  rested  upon  his  shoulders  alone.  And  I  fancy 
that  if  he  had  not  been  just  the  type  of  man  he  was, — 
tremendously  energetic  intellectually  (he  was  accustomed, 
later,  to  spend  thirteen  hours  a  day  "in  close  study"), 
astonishingly  brilliant  and  as  astonishingly  capable, — the 
affairs  of  Cotton  Mather's  "dear  infant"  would  have  gone 
wry  indeed.  But  he  happened  to  be  that  kind  of  man,  and, 
somehow  or  other,  without  a  permanent  and  older  head, — 
the  Trustees  merely  taking  turns  as  visitors, — the  Yale 
College  of  1 724-1 726  not  only  jogged  along  under  his 
direction,  but  very  decidedly  prospered.  When  Jonathan 
Edwards'  career  as  senior  Yale  Tutor  was  over,  some  sixty 
youths  had  become  scholars  at  the  institution. 

New  England's  future  theologian,  however,  did  not 
altogether  relish  his  routine  labors  as  the  spiritual  head  and 
fountain  of  knowledge  for  this  large  flock.^  He  was  in  the 
first  phase  of  that  intellectual  development  which  later  was 
to  make  him  famous.  He  had,  as  we  have  seen,  had  much 
the  same  experience  in  reading  the  Dummer  books  as 
Samuel  Johnson,  though  with  opposite  results.  Reading 
Locke's  "Human  Understanding,"  in  the  College  library, 
we  are  told  he  had  found  "a  far  higher  pleasure  in  the 
perusal  of  its  pages,  than  the  most  greedy  miser  finds,  when 

^  Anson  Phelps  Stokes  has  gathered  what  is  known  of  Edwards'  Yale 
career  in  a  chapter  of  his  "Mennorials  of  Eminent  Yale  Men,"  published 
by  the  Yale  University  Press  in  1914. 


The  End  of  an  Era  417 

gathering  up  handfuls  of  silver  and  gold,  from  some  newly 
discovered  treasure."  Already  a  thinker  and  incipient 
philosopher,  Jonathan  ^-^ 

Edwards    appears    to   ^^^7t..<j>%Le*^  &^&i^<St>^«/. 

have    found    his    life 

among  the  Yale  students  somewhat  irksome.  He  writes 
in  his  journal,  June  6,  1724,  at  the  end  of  his  first  week  as 
Tutor:  "This  Week  has  been  a  remarkable  Week  with  me 
with  Respect  to  Despondencies,  Fears,  Perplexities,  Multi- 
tudes of  Cares  and  Distractions  of  Mind;  being  the  Week 
I  came  hither  to  New-Haven,  in  order  to  entrance  upon  the 
Office  of  Tutor  of  the  College.  I  have  now  abundant  Rea- 
son to  be  convinced  of  the  Troublesomeness  and  Vexation 
of  the  World,  and  that  it  never  will  be  another  Kind  of 
World." 

We  have  some  interesting  records  of  the  life  of  these 
youths  under  Sir  Edwards.  That  it  was  a  period  of  strong 
religious  fervor  for  the  most  of  them,  would  have  been  true, 
doubtless,  had  not  a  Jonathan  Edwards  been  their  senior 
Tutor,  It  was  just  before  the  first  warnings  of  the  coming 
great  revival,  in  which  the  Yale  College  students  were  to  be 
stirred  up  by  a  fellow  scholar,  a  religious  enthusiast  named 
David  Ferris,  and  which  was  to  be  led  by  Jonathan 
Edwards  himself.  The  pendulum,  that  had  swung  toward 
irreligion  for  the  past  fifty  years,  was  swinging  back  again. 
But  there  were  other  reasons  for  this,  as  well.  The  Colony 
had  been  visited  by  a  disastrous  plague  of  smallpox  only 
three  years  before;  the  ravages  which  this  had  made  had 
sobered  people  considerably.  And  the  Trustees  themselves 
had  brought  a  new  religious  strength  to  the  institution  by 
forcing  the  two  previous  Tutors  publicly  to  accept  the 
Colony  creed.  The  life  of  the  College,  therefore,  was 
strongly  tinctured  by  a  renewed  rallying  to  the  traditional 
faith  (however  religiously  inert  the  Colony  folk,  generally 


41 8  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

speaking,  were).  For  the  first  time  since  Abraham  Pier- 
son's  death,  it  seems  to  have  again  had  something  of  the 
religious  fervor  of  those  early  days  in  the  Killingworth 
parsonage. 

And  so  the  daily  life  of  the  Yale  College  youths  of  this 
'  day  formed  itself  about  the  serious  business  of  their  souls' 
welfare.  There  are  daily  prayers  in  the  dining  hall,  at 
sunrise  of  mornings  and  again  late  in  the  afternoon.  Pri- 
vate prayer  meetings  in  the  students'  rooms  are  held,  as  they 
were  in  Samuel  Johnson's  day,  and  students  mighty  at  these 
functions  are  looked  upon  with  admiration  by  the  less  gifted. 
"Secret  prayer"  is  also  a  rule  of  the  institution  Itself. 
"Every  student,"  so  the  ancient  code  reads,  "shall  exercise 
himself  In  reading  Holy  Scriptures  by  himself  every  day," 
and  hold  private  prayers  for  "wisdom  for  himself"  in  his 
room  of  nights.  The  leading  scholar  of  the  Senior  Class, 
under  Jonathan  Edwards'  eye,  asks  the  blessing  thrice  daily 
at  meals  in  the  common  dining  hall.  On  Sabbath  days  the 
whole  retinue  of  students  parade.  In  their  scholars'  gowns, 
out  of  the  yard  of  the  College  house,  through  the  high 
board  fence  that  we  see  In  Greenwood's  drawing  of  that 
building,  down  the  footpath  across  the  Market-place  to  the 
squat  Meeting-house,  where  they  tramp  up  Into  the  gallery, 
and  listen  to  Mr.  Noyes'  none  too  Interesting  though  ortho- 
dox preaching.  The  highest  fine, — twenty  shillings, — for 
any  college  dereliction  at  this  time  fell  upon  the  scholar  who 
found  himself  in  extremis  on  these  occasions  and,  writhing 
on  his  bed  of  pain  (as  has  been  the  frequent  happening  ever 
since),  remained  away  until  the  flowing  gown  of  the  last  of 
his  fellows  disappeared  within  the  Meeting-house  doors. 
Nor  could  anyone  attend  any  other  religious  meeting.  All 
of  each  Friday  and  Saturday  appears  to  have  been  given  to  a 
rigorous  preparation  for  the  Sabbath-day  services.  Wolle- 
blus'  "Theology,"  and  Ames'  "Theses  and  his  Medulla," 


420  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

and  "the  Assembly's  Shorter  Catechism  in  Latin"  (so  the 
laws  operative  at  the  close  of  those  two  years  go)  were  re- 
cited on  week  days,  and  Dr.  Ames'  "Cases  of  Conscience" 
on  Sundays.  The  College  year  began  in  the  middle  of 
October,  and  continued  to  the  middle  of  the  following 
September,  when  Commencement  was  held. 

There  were  some  obstreperous  youngsters  among  these 
serious-minded  scholars,  and  College  Laws  (which  had  to 
be  copied  by  all  of  the  Freshmen  as  soon  as  they  matricu- 
lated) were  framed  to  govern  them.  Jonathan  Ashley's 
manuscript  copy  of  these,  laboriously  and  fearsomely 
scratched  down  as  a  Freshman  in  1726,  gives  a  good  picture 
of  the  student's  life  of  1726,  in  addition  to  what  I  have 
narrated.  "Every  student  shall  consider  ye  main  end  of 
his  study  to  wit  to  know  God  in  Jesus  Christ  and  answerably 
to  lead  a  Godly  sober  life,"  sets  down  this  Freshman.  "All 
Students  shall  avoid  ye  profanation  of  God's  Holy  name 
Attributes  word  and  ordinances  and  ye  Holy  Sabbath,  and 
shall  Carefully  attend  all  public  assembhes  for  Divine  wor- 
ship, and  shall  avoid  all  appearances  of  Contempt  and  irrev- 
erence." There  were  injunctions  against  "lying,  needless 
asseverations,  foolish  garrulings,  Chidings,  strifes,  railings, 
gesting,  uncomely  noise,  spreading  ill  rumors.  Divulging 
secrets  and  all  manner  of  troublesome  and  offensive  be- 
havior." In  their  relations  toward  their  parents,  "as  also 
magistrates,  elders,  Rector,  tutors,"  they  had  to  keep  "Due 
silence  in  their  presence  and  not  Disorderly  gaynsaying 
them." 

Judging  from  these  College  laws  of  1726,  the  quiet  little 
village  spread  about  the  borders  of  the  new  College  yard 
could  have  seen  but  little  of  the  scholars.  Sequestered  in 
their  new  College  hall,  where  they  roomed,  dined,  studied, 
recited,  read  the  Bible,  and  met  at  daily  prayers,  Jonathan 
Edwards'  youthful  charges  had  little  time  to  look  about 


The  End  of  an  Era  421 

them  in  the  town,  or  make  acquaintances.  As  at  Harvard, 
and  at  the  EngHsh  universities  on  a  greater  scale,  these 
young  gentlemen  were  supposed  to  spend  their  four  years 
of  college  life  strictly  attending  to  business  and  their  souls' 
salvation,  without  many  vacations  or  recreation  between- 
times.  They  were  rigidly  kept  at  work  except  for  a  half- 
hour  at  breakfast,  an  hour  and  a  half  "att  noon  after 
Dinner,"  and  "after  ye  Evening  prayer  till  nine  of  ye 
Clock."  As  we  now  look  back  upon  those  early  Yale  days, 
the  life  was  very  much  that  of  a  latter-day  country  boarding- 
school.  During  the  regular  College  hours  each  scholar  was 
expected  to  "studiously  redeem  His  time,"  and  to  observe 
"both  ye  hours  Common  for  ye  students  to  meet  in  ye  hall 
and  those  yt  are  appointed  to  his  own  lectures  which  he  shall 
Diligently  attend."  Except  when  a  student's  father  came 
to  town  to  see  how  his  son  was  progressing,  none  of  the 
College  youths  were  permitted  to  look  in  at  any  of  the  town 
taverns,  "victualling  house  or  inn  to  eat  or  Drink."  Picking 
up  stray  town  acquaintances  of  a  "Dissolute"  sort  was 
naturally  regulated  against,  nor  were  the  opportunities 
present  to  make  it  possible.  Even  when  the  great  public 
holidays  on  "Training  Days"  or  at  General  Court  elections, 
or  the  "High  Days"  came  around  in  the  none  too  generous 
Colony  calendar,  the  Yale  students  had  to  keep  their  rooms, 
unless  special  permission  came  from  the  Tutors  "to  go  a 
hunting  or  fowling."  No  lights  were  permitted  in  the 
College  rooms  after  nine  at  night  or  "before  four  in  ye 
morning." 

All  of  the  scholars  of  this  day  were  called  by  their  sur- 
names, "except  he  be  ye  son  of  a  noble  man  or  a  Knit's 
Eldest  son."  Until  President  Daggett's  time,  the  students 
were  listed  in  the  catalogues  according  to  their  family 
standing,  and  no  doubt  received  perquisites  on  that  basis. 

The  curriculum  of  Jonathan  Edwards'  period  as  senior 


422  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

Tutor  was  only  a  little  broader  than  that  with  which  Abra- 
ham Pierson  had  begun  the  Collegiate  School  education  at 
Killingworth.  We  have  seen  how  Tutors  Johnson  and 
Browne  had  introduced  something  of  Newton  and  Locke  In 
the  upper-class  studies.  This  had  been  a  very  great  advance, 
and  Edwards,  who  drew  upon  Locke  for  his  own  brilliant 
philosophy  some  score  of  years  later,  undoubtedly  continued 
them  In  his  classrooms.  So  that  the  Seniors  and  the  post- 
graduate students  who  came  back  to  study  theology,  doubt- 
less had  access  to  the  Dummer  books  and  had  their  eyes 
partly  opened  to  the  intellectual  activities  of  England. 
Rector  Pierson's  quaint  conception  of  natural  laws,  and  his 
undoubted  faith  in  the  theory  that  the  sun  rolled  around  the 
earth,  were  hardly  taught  to  this  second  generation  of  Yale 
students. 

Yet  much  of  the  antiquated  supernatural  rubbish  of  an 
earlier  scholastic  time  was  still  taught,  and,  indeed,  remained 
for  many  a  year  the  conservative  teaching  of  the  College. 
One  Dr.  Daniel  Turner,  Fellow  of  the  Royal  Society  of 
London,  for  some  now  unknown  reason,  had  asked  for  an 
honorary  degree  from  Yale  In  1723,  and  had  been  granted 
one, — an  M.  D., — the  first  New  England  honorary  Doctor's 
degree  after  Increase  Mather's  personally-granted  Doctor 
of  Laws  in  1692  at  Harvard.  In  return  for  this, — possibly 
in  purchase  of  It, — Turner  had  sent  over  twenty-eight  medi- 
cal books  (several  of  them  by  himself),  and  these  must 
have  added  considerably  to  the  modern  character  of  the 
College  shelves. 

I  presume,  however,  that  few  of  the  students  read  Dr. 
Turner's  collection  or  the  library  books,  as  perhaps  a  num- 
ber of  the  Trustees  were  now  quite  willing  that  they 
should.  The  emphasis  in  the  four-years  course  of  this  day 
was  still  on  theology  and  that  acquaintance  with  the  classics 
which  would  make  the  original  Scriptures  and  commentaries 


The  End  of  an  Era  423 

intelligible.  We  have  mentioned  Benjamin  Lord's  recollec- 
tion of  the  books  that  he  studied  during  the  Saybrook  Colle- 
giate School  period:  "Tully  and  Vergil";  that  ancient  Latin 
manual  of  "Burgersdicius"  that  was  in  the  Cambridge 
course  of  study  of  that  day;  Heerebord  and  "Ramus's 
Logick";  the  "Psalms  in  Hebrew";  "Ames'  Medulla"  and 
"Cases  of  Conscience."  Homer  was  not  in  the  list,  nor 
much  "Composition  and  Language"  (of  course  no  modern 
tongue),  and  the  mathematics  was  elementary.  Wollebius 
and  the  Assembly's  Catechism  we  have  also  noted.  And  we 
have  seen  how  "the  utmost  that  was  generally  attempted 
in  classical  learning  was  to  construe  five  or  six  of  Tully's 
Orations,  as  many  books  of  Vergil,  and  part  only  of  the 
Greek  Testament,  with  some  chapters  of  the  Hebrew 
Psalter.  Common  arithmetic  and  a  little  surveying  was  the 
ne  plus  ultra  of  mathematical  requirements."  To  under- 
stand Newton  and  Locke,  Rector  Cutler  had  added  "Al- 
sted's  Geometry  and  Gassendus'  Astronomy."  But,  other- 
wise, the  chief  business  of  the  College  was  as  of  yore, — 
and  rigidly  theological.  For  the  Freshman  year  there  was 
logic  and  elementary  Greek  and  Hebrew  (advanced  knowl- 
edge of  Latin  being  expected)  ;  in  Sophomore  year  the  same ; 
Junior  year  was  "principally  in  Physicks";  and  "ye  fourth 
year  in  metaphysicks  and  mathematicks  still  carrying  on  ye 
former  studies."  But  for  all  four  classes  "ye  last  days  of 
ye  week  are  allowed  perpetually  for  Rhetorick,  oratory 
and  Divinity  and  in  teaching  both  tongues,  and  Arts  [what- 
ever that  was],  and  such  Authors," — doubtless  from  the 
Dummer  books, — "as  shall  be  approved  by  ye  Rector."  The 
exercise  in  translating  English  and  Latin  and  the  Hebrew 
Testament  into  Greek  "before  they  begin  to  Recite  ye  origi- 
nall  tongues,"  was  incessant  throughout  the  three  upper- 
class  years.  All  of  the  students  had  to  "publickly  Repeat 
sermons  in  ye  hall,"  and  all  had  to  prepare  their  "Disputa- 


424  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

tions"  and  to  "Declaim"  once  in  six  weeks  before  the  others. 
Latin  was  the  only  language  permitted  for  "schollars  in 
their  Chambers  and  when  they  are  together,"  and  for  all 
classroom  work  except  in  English  itself.  This  conversa- 
tional Latin  was  probably  not  very  good.  Bankers  and 
Sluyter,  visiting  the  more  cultivated  Harvard  thirty  years 
before  this,  had  been  scandalized  by  the  bad  manners  and 
illiteracy  they  found  there.  They  went  into  Harvard  Hall 
and  found  ten  scholars  "smoking  tobacco  in  a  room  which 
smelt  like  a  tavern."  They  tried  Latin  on  these  youths  and 
were  astonished  at  the  sad  result.  The  Yale  students  of 
1726  probably  did  no  better. 

For  tuition  in  this  Calvinistic  stronghold  the  scholars  paid 
at  this  time  thirty  shiUings,  and  for  board  in  the  Commons 
four  shillings  eight  pence  a  week.  At  Commencement  twenty 
shillings  were  collected  for  the  diploma  (paid  over  to  the 
Rector),  and  twenty  more  for  the  expenses  of  the  Com- 
mencement dinner, — thus  starting  a  custom  which  has  come 
down  to  the  present  day. 

Ill 

Their  charter  now  legally  "defined"  by  the  General 
Assembly,  a  set  of  College  laws  in  force  to  protect  the 
scholars  from  temptations  and  theological  backslidings,  an 
increased  number  of  scholars  in  attendance  and  the  Rector's 
house  ready,  the  Trustees  now  made  a  final  effort  to  find  a 
proper  person  for  the  permanent  Rectorship. 

This  position  had  been  offered  to  Timothy  Woodbridge 
immediately  after  the  Cutler  fiasco,  probably  in  a  final 
attempt  to  smooth  over  the  Hartford  dissension.  But  he 
had  declined,  though  he  officiated  at  the  next  Commencement 
as  the  presiding  officer.  During  the  four  years  that  had 
since  passed,  it  would  appear  that  no  Rector  pro  tern  (as 


The  End  of  an  Era  425 

had  been  the  case  after  Pierson's  death)  had  been  appointed. 
Young  Jonathan  Edwards  seems  to  have  managed  so  well 
that  there  was  no  need  for  one,  though  old  Samuel  Andrew 
of  Milford  again  acted  in  the  office  at  the  Commencements 
in  the  College  hall  and  Meeting-house. 

Edwards,  however,  was  now  considering  a  call  to  the 
Northampton  Meeting-house  and  the  necessity  for  a  decision 
was  thus  forced  upon  the  rather  inactive  Trustees.  Several 
efforts  to  this  end,  to  be  sure,  had  been  made  before  this 
time,  but  without  success.  One  Nathaniel  Williams,  a  Har- 
vard graduate  of  1693,  and  for  the  last  fourteen  years 
master  of  the  Boston  Grammar  School,  had  declined  it. 
The  Rev.  Eliphalet  Adams,  Harvard  1694,  now  the  suc- 
cessor of  Gurdon  Saltonstall  at  the  New  London  church, 
and  just  elected  a  Trustee,  was  approached;  he  was  willing 
enough,  but  his  congregation  refused  to  dismiss  him.  A 
unanimous  election  had  then,  in  1724,  been  offered  to  the 
Rev.  Edward  Wigglesworth,  Harvard  17 10,  Professor  of 
Divinity  at  Harvard,  but  he  had  refused.  As  a  substitute 
for  him  the  Trustees  had  elected  the  young  William  Russell 
of  Middletown,  the  son  of  little  old  Noadiah  Russell  of 
almanac  fame,  and,  as  we  have  seen,  a  former  Tutor.  At 
that  same  meeting, — it  was  the  one  when  Jonathan  Edwards 
had  been  appointed  Senior  Tutor, — it  had  been  voted  to 
call  Elisha  Williams  in  case  Russell  did  not  want  it.  Russell 
declined  and  Elisha  Williams  was  formally  elected  the  Yale 
College  Rector,  September  29,  1725. 

We   have    followed   this    enterprising   young   gentleman 
through  his  days  as  the  head  of  the  rival  Collegiate  School 
at   his   Wethersfield   farm,   his   minis- 
terial labors   at   Newington,    and   his    (^CiAJxajUh ^a^^^ 
entry  into  Colony  politics  as  clerk  of 

the  Lower  House.  During  these  years  he  had  been  Jona- 
than Edwards'  instructor,  and  I  suppose  that  the  latter's 


426 


The  Beginnings  of  Yale 


firm  friendship  and  admiration  for  him  no  doubt  had  had 
something  to  do  with  the  call  now  voted. 

Yet  conditions  were  different  in  1726,  so  far  as  the  Board 
of  Trustees  was  concerned,  than  they  had  been  during  the 
long  struggle  over  the  College  site.  The  bitternesses  had 
evaporated  that  had  come  from  that  controversy.  Governor 
Saltonstall  had  gone.  Of  the  original  eleven  Trustees,  only 
four, — Andrew,  Woodbridge,  Webb,  and  Samuel  Russel, — 
were  left.  James  Noyes,  Israel  Chauncy,  Thomas  Buck- 
ingham, Abraham  Pierson,  James  Pierpont,  and  Noadiah 
Russell  had  gone  the  way  of  all  men,  and  the  decrepit  Samuel 
Mather  had  been  quietly  retired.  Their  successors, — Moses 
Noyes,  Ruggles,  John  Davenport,  Thomas  and  Stephen 
Buckingham, — who  had  taken  part  in  the  Hartford  con- 
troversy, were  still  Trustees,  and  to  their  number  had  been 
recently  added  EHphalet  Adams  of  New  London  and  Samuel 


The  End  of  an  Era  427 

Whitman,  also  a  recent  Harvard  graduate,  and  now  the 
minister  at  Farmington.  The  Trustees  were  now  for  peace, 
and  EHsha  WiUiams'  election  appears  to  have  been  satis- 
factory to  all  of  them.  Some  little  matters  had  to  be 
adjusted,  however,  concerning  the  financial  reimbursement 
of  the  Newington  church  people  for  his  loss  (as  was  the 
regular  Assembly  fashion  of  the  day)  before  he  could  accept. 
The  Assembly  finally  lifted  Colony  taxes  from  the  town  for 
four  years  until  a  sum  could  be  in  hand  to  settle  another 
pastor,  and  Elisha  Williams  turned  his  back  on  politics  for 
the  moment,  rode  down  to  New  Haven  with  his  wife  and 
goods,  was  joyfully  received  by  the  Trustees,  took  the  oath 
of  allegiance  to  the  Saybrook  Confession,  and  moved  into 
the  new  Rector's  house,  which  in  turn  was  to  become  the 
home  of  Presidents  Clap,  Stiles,  and  Dwight. 

President  Clap's  "Annals"  has  a  pleasant  little  account  of 
the  installation  of  this  new  Rector  that  was  to  close  this 
first  era  in  Yale  history.  "In  the  Library,"  he  says,  "before 
the  Trustees,  he  gave  his  Consent  to  the  Confession  of  Faith 
and  Rules  of  Church-Discipline,  agreed  upon  by  the 
Churches  of  this  Colony,  in  1708.  After  Dinner  he  made  a 
publick  Oration  in  the  Hall;  and  the  Trustees  successively 
came  and  saluted  him  as  Rector." 

And  after  this  ceremony  he  no  doubt  entertained  some  of 
the  visiting  ministers  at  his  new  Rector's  house.  This  was  a 
rather  fine  building  for  that  early  day.  Standing  at  the  south 
end  of  the  old  Hooke  lot  at  the  corner  of  the  present  Chapel 
and  College  Streets,  it  faced  the  latter  highway,  some  twenty 
feet  back  from  it.  It  was  a  large  house,  two-storied  after 
the  manner  of  the  better  houses  of  the  day,  with  a  great 
high-sloping  roof  with  dormer  windows  and  two  chimneys, 
between  which  was  a  square-fenced  open  cupola.  Between 
the  great  square  lower  rooms  was  a  broad  central  hall,  ex- 
tending through  to  the  gardens,  broad  double  doors  leading 


428 


The  Beginnings  of  Yale 


^Jhe  ^resicfenis 
z/iouse  -^ 


into  it  from  the  roadway.  In  the  rear  was  a  summer  kitchen, 
surrounded  by  orchards  and  meadow  running  out  to  the 
present  Chapel  Street.  It  had  been  built,  finally,  from  the 
College  funds  and  £300  received  from  the  Colony  imposts 
on  "rhum,"  and  it  was  to  stand  until  1834,  when,  after  an 
interim,  it  was  to  be  succeeded  by  the  church  building,  now 
College  Street  Hall,  still  standing  on  the  site.  Sitting  at 
his  library  window  in  this  spacious  "President's  House," 
Rector  Williams  could  look  up  across  his  garden,  and  the 
street  with  its  slow  ox-teams  and  its  square-coated  vil- 
lagers in  their  knee-breeches  passing  by,  to  the  cerulean 
College  building  where  his  Tutors  and  the  College  library 
and  the  scholars  were  housed,  and  where,  bulwarked  on  all 
sides  against  the  insidious  approach  of  any  new  and  heretical 
theology,  the  Connecticut  Colony  leaders  of  the  i8th 
Century  were  to  be  started  on  the  orthodox  path. 


The  End  of  an  Era  429 

IV 

And  so  we  come  to  the  end  of  these  easy-going  chronicles 
of  the  beginnings  of  Yale.  Puritan  settlers,  black-gowned 
ministers,  Colonial  Governors,  youthful  scholars,  troop  be- 
fore our  eyes  out  of  the  musty  past,  up  and  down  the  King's 
Highway  of  the  Long  Island  shore,  as  we  recall  these  early 
Yale  days.  But  a  century  before,  and  the  site  of  the  new 
Colony  College,  and  of  New  Haven  itself,  had  been  a 
wilderness.  Settled  by  dreamers  of  a  Puritan  Utopia,  the 
New  Haven  theocracy  and  with  it  its  proposed  Puritan  col- 
lege, had  faded  away  in  that  workaday  world  which  its  dis- 
illusioned founders  came  to  see  existed  in  New  England  as 
it  did  in  Old  England.  New  times  had  come,  and  with  them 
that  renewed  need  of  a  Colony  school  which  should  rebuild 
the  shattered  religious  fabric  of  the  settlers.  This  had  been 
accomplished,  and  Yale  College,  rising  out  of  the  all  but 
wrecked  Collegiate  School,  now  Faced  the  ancient  New 
Haven  Market-place,  "mounted  in  an  eminent  place 
thereof,"  a  veritable  "Egyptian  pyramid"  to  the  memory  of 
Governor  Elihu  Yale,  who  had  unexpectedly  made  it 
possible. 

The  foundations  had  thus  been  laid  for  the  Yale  that 
was  to  come.  Yet  these  beginnings  of  the  College  were 
more  than  half  a  century  before  the  Revolutionary  War, 
and  in  a  period  in  American  history  when  every  social  in- 
stitution was  primitive  and  provincial  and  in  the  makings. 
The  keynote  of  the  settlement  of  New  England  had  been 
religious  liberty.  John  Davenport  and  Thomas  Hooker 
had  set  up  their  tabernacles  in  the  Connecticut  wildernesses 
with  this  chief  end  In  view,  and  their  successors  had  main- 
tained that  end.  The  stern  Puritanism  of  the  Colonial 
settlers,  indeed,  was  to  come  down  through  the  next  century 
and  mould,  If  not  retard,  the  intellectual  character  of  the 


430  The  Beginnings  of  Yale 

Connecticut  people.  A  survey  of  i8th  Century  Yale 
would  show  this  clearly,  if,  indeed,  a  study  of  still  later  days 
would  not  still  find  conservative  currents  flowing,  if  in  less 
measure,  from  this  early  Puritan  spring.  It  was  not  until 
the  modern  scientific  period  came  in,  and  American  national- 
ism became  a  fact,  that  the  Yale  which  developed  from  these 
early  beginnings  came  to  throw  off  the  intellectual  con- 
servatism with  which,  bounded  by  its  Puritan  theological 
horizon,  it  started.  If  religious  liberty  was  the  characteristic 
of  the  first  Connecticut  generation,  and  political  liberty  that 
of  the  Revolutionary  period,  it  was  another  century  before 
the  next  step — intellectual  liberty — followed.  Yet,  with  all 
of  Its  drawbacks,  the  stern  Puritanism  of  the  beginnings  of 
Yale  has  been  a  mighty  force  in  the  upbuilding  of  the 
country.  It  had  in  it  the  germs  of  freedom,  just  as  it  Itself 
sprang  from  the  religious  and  political  iconoclasm  of  its 
early  English  beginnings. 

But  this  was  all  in  the  future.  The  first  quarter  century 
of  the  College  hardly  had  been  more  than  a  continuous 
struggle  for  life  itself.  Harvard,  having  thrown  off  the 
yoke  of  the  traditional  Massachusetts  Theocracy,  was  well 
on  the  way  toward  its  second  and  broader  intellectual  stage 
when  Yale  began  as  a  Connecticut  Congregational  strong- 
hold on  the  Saybrook  Platform. 


(odcCi 


iyCOt-^euinj 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Adams,  Eliphalet  {Harv.  1694), 
minister  at  New  London,  425 ; 
elected  Trustee  of  Yale  College, 
425,  426;  declines  Yale  College 
Rectorship,  425 

Addington,  Isaac,  Mass.  conserva- 
tive, 137;  asked  for  draft  of  Col- 
legiate School  charter,  {lyoi)  159, 
164;  reply  with  Samuel  Sewall, 
166;  sends  charter,  176;  for 
church-control  of  Collegiate 
School,  177;  letter  to  Founders 
about  charter,  178-9;  Pierpont's 
changes  from  charter  of,  179-81 

Allerton,  Isaac,  early  New  Haven 
house  of,  35 

Ailing,  John,  of  New  Haven,  Colle- 
giate School  Treasurer  (7702-/7), 
203,  250,  287;  solicits  money  for 
New  Haven  site  for  college, 
{1716)  319;  New  Haven  house 
and  public  offices  of,  203 ;  death 
of,  {1717)  338;  purchases  for  Col- 
legiate School,  389 

Andrew,  Samuel  {Harv.  1675), 
called  to  Milford,  Conn.,  church, 
{1685)  121;  career  at  Harvard, 
122,  251;  pioneer  in  Collegiate 
School  movement,  144-7;  conserv- 
ative in  church-synod  movement, 
157;  Trustee  of  Collegiate  School, 
181,  312,  of  Yale  College,  426;  at 
Trustees'  meetings,  196,  284,  319- 
22,  340;  scholarly  but  unbusiness- 
like character  of,  197,  251,  313, 
324;  poor  administration  head  for 
School,  251,  369;  sends  scholars  to 
Collegiate  School,  234;  Rector  pro 
tern,   {1707-16)    288,  307,  316,  322, 


324;  pro  tern,  {1716-19)  330,  335, 
343,  362,  369,  415,  425;  undesirous 
of  Rectorship,  {1717)  313  (foot- 
note), letter  to  that  effect,  334-5; 
helping  to  secure  new  Rector, 
361-2;  for  Saybrook  site  for 
School,  317,  319;  for  New  Haven 
site,  320,  340;  teaches  Senior 
classes,  {1707  ff.)  250,  318;  on 
College  House  building  committee, 
(77/7)  327;  relations  with  Tim- 
othy Woodbridge,  335;  orders 
Saybrook  books  brought  to  New 
Haven,  365;  and  student  rebellion, 
{1719)  370-1;  and  Commons  re- 
bellion, (77^7)  387-8;  advises 
Rector  Cutler's  election,  372; 
among  few  surviving  Founders, 
{1726)    426 

Andros,  Sir  Edmund,  Governor- 
General  of  N.  E.  and  N.  Y.,  110; 
effort  to  absorb  Conn.,  115,  121; 
arrives  in  New  Haven,  132;  gift 
of  books  to  Collegiate  School, 
300-1 

Antinomianism,  in  Mass.,  23,  105 

Arithmetic,  in  Collegiate  School  cur- 
riculum, 423 

Arminianism,  in  Yale  College,  409 

Ashley,  Jonathan  {Y.  C.  1730),  copy 
of  College  laws  by,    {1726)   420 

Astronomy,  added  to  Yale  College 
curriculum,  {1719)  423;  Coperni- 
can  theory  first  taught,   {1721)   398 

Athenasum  (0/  1761),  354 

Atwater,  Joshua,  New  Haven  Colony 
Treasurer,  44;  College  Street  lot 
of,  325-6;  sold  to  Collegiate 
School  for  College  House,  326; 
house  torn  down,   {17 17)   338 


434 


Index 


Bay  Psalm  Book,  268-9 

Beecher,  Widow  Hannah,  College 
cook,   {17 2 1)   387 

Bells,  first  New  Haven  church, 
{1681)  129;  first  Killingworth, 
{1703)  229,  230  (footnote)  ;  first 
Yale  College,   {1720)    375 

Berkeley,  Bishop,  gift  to  Yale  sug- 
gested by  Samuel  Johnson,  410, 
412 

Bible,  and  Puritans,  6,  55;  reading 
of  in  originals  chief  end  of  N.  E. 
common  school  education,  56;  pur- 
chased in  New  Haven,  {1721) 
391;  General  Assembly  orders 
families  to  buy,  393-4 

Blue,  first  mention  of  color  in  Yale 
annals,  255,  355,  428 

Blue  Laws   (Peters),  38 

Boston,  Post- road,  224;   Synod,  279 

Bowers,  John,  New  Haven  school- 
master, 78  ;  school  troubles  of,  79  ; 
resigns,  81 ;  instructor  of  Abraham 
Pierson,  Jr.,  81   (footnote) 

Branford  (Conn.),  stockade  of,  32 
(footnote),  207;  joins  New  Haven 
Jurisdiction,  64;  settlers'  removal 
to  Newark,  N.  J.,  98;  boys  at 
Harvard  {to  i6go),  119;  lapse  in 
ministry,  120;  calls  Samuel  Russel, 
121;  Collegiate  School  Founders' 
meetings  in,  158-161,  168-171;  de- 
scription of,  {164.9)  206-7,  {1701) 
168 

Brockett,  John,  surveys  New  Haven, 
30 

Browne,  Captain,  agent  for  Colle- 
giate School,  254;  purchases  for 
Collegiate  School,  254-5;  pur- 
chases for  New  Haven  people, 
{1721)    388-392 

Browne,  Daniel  {Coll.  Sch.  17 14), 
leaning  toward  Episcopal  Church, 
311,    397,   change   to,    {1721)    403, 


remains  in,  409;  Tutor,  {1718-22) 
343 ;  moves  into  new  College 
House,  361;  reads  Dummer  books, 
397;  intellectual  awakening  of, 
398;  before  Trustees,  405-7;  goes 
to  England  and  death  of,  410 

Buckingham,  Daniel,  houses  Colle- 
giate School  books  at  Saybrook, 
365;  struggle  to  keep,  366-7 

Buckingham,  Stephen  {Harv.  1693), 
153;  receives  Collegiate  School 
M.A.  degree,  {1702)  233,  322; 
Trustee,  {1716)  322,  426;  absent 
from  Trustees'  meetings,  340 ; 
counted  against  New  Haven  site, 
340;  letter  on  Episcopalian  move- 
ment in  College,   {1722)  408 

Buckingham,  Thomas  {Harv.  1690), 
of  Hartford,  army  chaplain, 
{1711)  301;  Trustee,  312,  426; 
petitions  Assembly  for  Collegiate 
School  removal  to  Hartford,  313- 
4,  316;  opposition  to  Saybrook 
site,  315  ff. ;  at  Trustees'  meetings, 
319  ff.,  340  ff. ;  opposition  to  New 
Haven  site,  320,  333  ff.;  calls 
Hartford  town  meeting  to  secure 
School,  336,  340;  support  of 
Wethersfield  School,  315-6,  335, 
363;  absent  from  Trustees'  meet- 
ings, 337,  369;  character,  363; 
obstinacy  of  Hartford  defection, 
374;  Deputy  in  House,  (///p) 
374-5;  end  of  opposition  to  ma- 
jority Trustees,   376 

Buckingham,  Thomas,  of  Saybrook, 
sketch  of,  154;  conservative  on 
church-synod  movement,  157; 
active  in  agitation  for  Collegiate 
School,  165,  176,  186;  Trustee, 
181;  strong  character  of,  194,  250- 
1;  at  Trustees'  meetings,  196,  284, 
319;  for  Saybrook  site  for  Colle- 
giate   School,    201,    314;    letter    to 


Index 


435 


Fitz-John  Winthrop  on  Collegiate 
School's  Founding,  203-4;  first 
Collegiate  School  Commencement 
at  house  of,  {1702)  232;  sends 
scholar,  234;  in  charge  of  School, 
{1707-g)  250;  death  of,  {1709) 
254;  mentioned,  312,  426 

Bulkeley,  Gershom  {Harv.  1655), 
sketch  of,  149;  against  Collegiate 
School  charter,  169-70,  187;  sends 
scholars  to  School,  234 

Burgersdicius,  Latin  manual  of 
studied  in  Collegiate  School  and 
Yale  College,  239,  423 

Cambridge  University  (England), 
graduates  in  N.  E.,  264;  Locke 
studied  in,  266  (footnote)  ;  degree 
given  to  Samuel  Johnson,  {1722) 
410;  Latin  manuals  in,  423 

Caner,  Henry,  builder  of  first  College 
House,  {1717-8)  327,  380,  386;  of 
Statehouse,  386;  house  on  Chapel 
Street,  386 

Charles  I,  and  Puritan  clergy,  22; 
Civil  Wars  of,  67;  relations  to 
N.  E.,  108 

Charles  H,  Restoration  and  N.  E., 
89;  and  Puritans,  89,  100,  105; 
and  New  Haven  and  Conn.  Col- 
onies, 90-1,  107;  attitude  toward 
N.  E.  results  in  new  conditions, 
107-10,  139 

Chauncey,  Charles  (President  of 
Harv.),   100 

Chauncy,  Israel  {Harv.  1661), 
sketch  of,  151;  conservative  on 
church-synod  movement,  157; 
active  in  Founding  of  Collegiate 
School,  165;  Trustee,  181;  at 
Trustees'  meetings,  196,  197;  de- 
clines Collegiate  School  first 
Rectorship,  202;  death  of,  {1703) 
312,  426 


Chauncy,  Nathaniel  {Coll.  Sch. 
1702),  degree  granted  to,  {1702) 
ZTil    (and  footnote) 

Cheever,  Ezekiel,  first  New  Haven 
schoolmaster,  44,  51,  263 ;  charac- 
ter, 52;  career  in  New  Haven 
Town  School,  58,  59;  Latin 
"Accidence"  of,  53 ;  and  Harvard 
College,  60;  leaves  New  Haven, 
{1649)    60,  69 

Chemical  Laboratory  (0/  17S2),  354 

Clap,  Thomas,  quoted:  on  Collegiate 
School  Founding,  144,  158-61;  on 
the  date  of  the  Founding,  169;  on 
College  House  dimensions,  353 
(footnote),  on  cost  of,  {1722)  380; 
on  Yale  College  finances,  (0/ 
1720)  377,  (0/  1722)  380;  on 
Rector  Williams'  installation, 
{1726)  427;  antagonistic  to  Epis- 
copal Church  students,  412 

Classical  Languages,  studied  in 
N.  E.  schools  in  order  to  read  New 
Testament  in  originals,  55;  see 
Latin,  Greek  and  Hebrenv 

Clinton   (Conn.),  see  Killingivorth 

Coleman,  Benjamin  (Harvard  Fel- 
low), declines  to  take  disaffected 
Yale  students,   {1719)   371 

Coleman,  John,  in  new  Boston 
church,  113 

"College-corn,"  70-1,   120    (footnote) 

College  Entrance  Requirements,  for 
Harvard,  {1639  ff.)  53,  60,  89; 
{1684.)  118;  for  Collegiate  School, 
{1701)   199 

Collegiate  School  of  Connecticut 
{1701-18) 

Founding  {1701)  :  agitation  for 
begun,  {1692  ff.)  134,  {1699-1700) 
142-3 ;  few  Harvard  graduates 
from  Conn.,  120;  more  Conn, 
orthodox  ministers  needed,  136; 
relation    of    to    old    New    Haven 


43^ 


Index 


"College"  project,  134;  relation 
of  to  Harvard  and  Mass.  theol- 
ogy, {after  1692)  HO,  136-42,  164, 
176-7,  408;  relation  of  to  Conn, 
church  conditions,  {after  1685) 
135-6,  146-7,  156-7;  Moses  Noyes 
on  reasons  for  Founding,  137,  409; 
President  Clap's  sequence  of 
events,  144,  158-61;  orthodox  Cal- 
vinistic  purpose  in,  198,  258,  392, 
407-9,  429;  "Public  service"  pur- 
pose of,  57,  189;  church-synod 
control  proposed,  156-7,  189,  de- 
feated, 157;  proposed  by  Cotton 
Mather,  164;  use  of  name  "Colle- 
giate School,"  180,  188;  Colony 
"Inspectors"  proposed  by  Cotton 
Mather,  165,  Assembly  question 
on,  188 ;  Quarterly  Trustee  "Visit- 
ors" named,  {1716)  323;  Harvard 
"Founding"  of  disproven,  164 
(footnote),  176-7;  Assembly  first 
meeting  in  New  Haven  {Oct. 
1701)  seized  as  opportunity,  161-3; 
Founders'  letters  asking  advice  of 
Mathers,  Sewall,  and  Addington, 
{1701)  164;  do.  of  Bulkeley,  Secre- 
tary Kimberly,  and  John  Eliot, 
164;  replies  by  the  Mathers,  164-5; 
replies  by  Sewall  and  Addington, 
165-6;  "Instructions"  sent  to 
Sewall  and  Addington  for  charter, 
167;  Branford  "Founding  Meet- 
ing," {Oct.  1701)  167-71,  Clap's 
account,  158-61;  fear  of  English 
interference,  163,  187;  prior 
Founding  by  ministers  an  impor- 
tant necessity,  168-9,  170,  188,  337; 
Sewall-Addington  charter  draft 
received,  176;  contents  of  and 
Pierpont's  changes  from,  176-81, 
preamble  to  charter,  187  (foot- 
note) ;  charter  granted  by  General 


Assembly,  186-90;  question  of  date 
of  Founding,  158-60 

Organization  {1701-2)  :  theo- 
logical purpose  in,  180,  199; 
organization  meeting  at  Saybrook, 
192-203;  Treasurers  chosen:  Na- 
thaniel Lynde,  {1701)  203,  Richard 
Rosewell,  {1701)  203,  John  Ailing, 
{1702)  203;  course  of  study,  200; 
laws,  {1701)  199 ;  Trustees  chosen, 
181;  first  Rector  elected,  202-3; 
Rector  not  necessarily  a  Trustee, 
189  (footnote),  199;  entrance  re- 
quirements to,  199;  tuition  at,  200; 
degrees  to  be  granted,  200 ;  site 
question,  see  beloiv 

{170 1-7)  in  Killinffivorth:  225 
ff.;  curriculum  of,  180,  199-200; 
at  Pierson  parsonage,  236  ff. ;  stu- 
dent life  of,  237  ff.,  240  ff.;  student 
rebellion,  {1704)  237;  intellectual 
standards  of,  273,  276;  lack  of 
culture  of,  12;  scientific  theories 
taught  at,  273-6;  failure  of  threat- 
ened, 235,  245;  moved  to  Say- 
brook,  {1707)  250;  Commence- 
ments, 232-3 

{1707-18)  in  Saybrook  and  Neiv 
Haven:  245  ff. ;  Seniors  go  to  Mil- 
ford,  {1707)  250;  Samuel  Andrew 
elected  Rector  pro  tern,  {1707) 
250-1;  in  Lynde  house,  252-4; 
supplies  bought  for,  254-5 ;  course 
made  four  years,  255 ;  Commence- 
ment work,  257 ;  Commencements 
quiet,  257,  Benjamin  Lord's  de- 
scription of,  257-8,  (77/7)  330, 
338;  failure  of  School  threatened, 
286,  288,  304,  312,  318,  329;  pro- 
vincial intellectual  standards  of, 
275-6,  301,  310;  military  duty 
lifted  from  scholars,  {1713)  288; 
curriculum,  310,  423;  permanent 
Rector    voted,     {1714)     307;     and 


Index 


437 


Colony  church,  277-8,  279,  282; 
and  Saybrook  Platform,  285-6, 
q.v.;  control  of  attempted  by 
General  Assembly,  304,  q.'v.; 
James  Pierpont's  appeal  for  finan- 
cial aid  to  England,  {1711)  290, 
292 ;  Jeremiah  Dummer's  efforts 
for,  q.'v.;  Pierpont's  appeal  for 
books,  {1712)  295-6;  Sir  John 
Davie's  gift  of  books,  {17 14)  296- 
8 ;  Dummer  books  received, 
(,1714.)  298-302;  need  of  College 
House  to  store  books,  304-5 ; 
appeal  to  Assembly  for  money, 
{1714)  305-6;  money  voted  by 
Assembly,  306 ;  Trustees  vote  to 
build  College  House  in  Saybrook, 
{1716)  306,  313;  site  struggle,  see 
beloiju;  Saybrook  a  poor  location 
for  School,  251,  311;  poor  teach- 
ing at,  315;  student  rebellion  over 
Tutors,  {1716)  316;  division  of 
School  into  three  sections,  {17 16) 
318;  removal  to  New  Haven, 
{1716)  322-3;  Senior  "Disserta- 
tions," 358;  Elihu  Yale's  gift, 
{1718)  344-51;  second  Commence- 
ment in  Nevy  Haven,  {1718)  356 
ff. ;  name  changed  to  "Yale  Col- 
lege," {1718)  357,  360;  Calvinis- 
tic  theology  of,  180,  423;  after 
1718  see  under  Yale  College 

Site  Struggle:  decision  left 
blank  in  charter,  {1701)  181, 
reasons  for,  183 ;  Killingworth 
selected  as  temporary  makeshift, 
{1701)  199,  200-4,  246;  efforts  to 
settle  permanently  at  Saybrook, 
{1701-7)  246-50;  settlement  at 
Saybrook,  {1707)  250;  Saybrook 
not  a  good  place  for  School,  251, 
311;  division  of  Trustees  over, 
{17 1 4-6)  304;  results  of  need  of 
College    House,    305-7;    vote    for 


permanent  settlement  at  Saybrook, 
306;  Woodbridge  and  Buckingham 
appeal  to  Assembly  against  Say- 
brook site,  {1716)  313-4,  316; 
astonishment  of  Saybrook  faction, 
314,  316;  Pierpont's  party  for  Say- 
brook, 201,  246,  314,  315;  reasons 
for  Hartford  Trustees'  dissatis- 
faction, 315-6;  Assembly  orders 
hearing,  {17 16)  317,  small  attend- 
ance at,  317;  Trustees  told  to 
decide  on  site,  318;  Colony  agita- 
tion of  site  question,  {1716)  318; 
Wethersfield  School  begun,  311, 
318,  q.v.;  rival  claims  for,  318-9; 
New  Haven  subscription  for,  319; 
Saybrook  again  voted  for  by  ma- 
jority, 319;  New  Haven  first  voted 
for,  {17 16)  320;  removal  of  School 
to  New  Haven,  322-3 ;  character 
of  Hartford  opposition,  334-6, 
370;  Hartford  town  meeting  op- 
poses New  Haven  choice,  336; 
reply  by  seacoast  Trustees,  337; 
New  Haven  site  vote  reaffirmed  by 
majority,  {1717)  338;  Assembly 
orders  hearing  of  majority  action 
in  building  College  House,  {1717) 
338-40;  Saltonstall  stops  Assembly 
movement  to  change  site,  341 ; 
exchange  of  Hartford  and  New 
Haven  arguments,  341 ;  final  deci- 
sion for  New  Haven  by  Assembly, 
{1717)  342;  continuance  of 
Wethersfield  School,  343,  350,  q.'v.; 
Elihu  Yale  gift  settles  question, 
{17 18)   361 

College  House:  Cotton  Mather 
on  no  need  of,  {1701)  165,  307-8; 
on  aid  from  Elihu  Yale  for,  348; 
need  of  as  result  of  Dummer 
books,  {1716)  304-5,  308,  311,  429; 
Assembly  financial  aid  for,  {1716) 
305-6;    voted    for    Saybrook,    306, 


438 


Index 


313,  for  New  Haven,  321;  Salton- 
stall  helps  on  "architechtonick 
part"  of,  321 ;  building  committee 
on,  322,  327;  New  Haven  site  pur- 
chased, {1716)  326;  building  be- 
gun, {Jan.  1717)  327,  in  progress, 
338,  350;  first  Commencement  in, 
353 ;  opened  to  scholars,  361 ; 
rooms  in,  356;  money  needed  for, 
344;  description  of  in  letter  to 
Dummer,  345,  353-6 

General:  Commons,  at  Rector 
Pierson's  parsonage,  {1701-7)  239, 
240;  scholars  help  furnish  table, 
243;  at  Saybrook,  {1707-16)  254; 
Finances,  {1710)  287,  {1712)  288, 
{1717)  326,  342,  {1718)  more 
funds  needed,  344  ff. ;  Gifts,  {to 
1701)  181;  Fitch,  190-1;  Lynde, 
254;  New  Haven  subscription, 
319;  New  Haven  land,  319;  Elihu 
Yale,  351-3;  Colony  grants,  287-8, 
315,  325-6,  377;  Library:  books 
given  at  Branford,  {1701)  158, 
169;  at  Saybrook,  {1701)  198; 
from  Abraham  Pierson,  {1707) 
211-2;  Davie  gift  of,  296-8,  365; 
Dummer  collection,  q.v.;  Moses 
Noyes  "Custodian"  of,  322;  Libra- 
rian (Senior  Tutor),  322;  in  Say- 
brook, 323,  365;  part  of  brought 
to  New  Haven,  {1716)  329;  Say- 
brook collection  brought,  {1718) 
361,  364-8;  number  in,  {77/8) 
367;  Library  room  in  College 
House,  356;  Rector's  house,  voted 
for  Saybrook,  306-7,  for  .  New 
Haven,  321;  site  purchased,  {1716) 
326;  money  needed,  344;  5fAo/arj.' 
{1702)  232;  {1703-5)  234-5; 
{1706-7)  243,  245;  {17 1 4)  288, 
307,  315;  {1716-9)  324;  first  rebel- 
lion of,  {1704)  236-7  (and  foot- 
note),   387;    rebellion,     {of    1716) 


316;  critical  attitude  toward 
Tutors,  {1709-14)  308-10,  311,  316; 
Trustees,  how  selected,  181-2; 
changes  in,  {by  1716)  312,  323; 
letters  of,  to  Dummer,  {1712)  295, 
{17 16)  323  (footnote),  {17 1 8) 
345,  366,  to  Elihu  Yale,  344; 
divided  over  site,  q-v.;  meetings 
of,  {1701)  192-203,  (770^)  203, 
{1707)  278,  {1708)  283  ff.,  {1715) 
305,  {1716)  306,  311-2,  319,  320-2, 
{1717)    337-8,    {1718)    353 

Composition,    in     Collegiate    School 
curriculum,  423 

Congregationalism,  changes  in  N.  E., 
135,   139,   142,  392 

Connecticut  Colony 

{1636-65):  settled,  25;  com- 
pared with  New  Haven,  26;  broad 
franchise  of,  27 ;  political  success 
of,  113-4;  proclaims  Charles  H, 
90;  secures  new  charter,  91; 
claims  New  Haven  jurisdiction, 
91-8;  absorbs  New  Haven  Colony, 
98;  compared  with  Mass.,  113; 
religious  condition  low  in,  {1721) 
392 

{1665-1726),  political  calm 
during,  114-5;  religious  changes 
few,  115-6,  136,  146-7;  new 
church  organization,  156-7,  278  ff., 
{1724)  417;  relations  to  England, 
163,  289-90;  people  in,  {1701-14) 
259  ff. ;  dress  and  manners,  262-3; 
and  Colony  churches,  282,  285; 
increasing  conservatism  in,  346; 
religious  laws  of,  393  ;  and  alleged 
Episcopal  plot,  {1722)  411;  small- 
pox in,   {1716)   318,    {1724)   417 

Education,  not  supporting  a 
"Colony  College,"  {1652)  75;  com- 
pulsory school  code,  {1650)  79, 
118;  students  at  Harvard,  79,  119- 
20;  failure  of,  79-80,  118,  120,  265; 


Index 


439 


Hopkins  bequest  to,  84-5 ;  few 
educated  people  in,  {1701)  189, 
{1721)  392;  General  Assembly  on 
"too  much  learning,"  379-80;  sub- 
scription to  Rector's  House,  {17 21) 
380;  books  in,  {1721)  391-2;  re- 
mote from  England,  396 

General  Assembly,  grants  Col- 
legiate School  charter,  183,  186-90; 
meetings  of,  161,  172-91,  338  ff., 
362-4;  reorganization,  162;  mem- 
bership, {Oct.  1701)  186  (foot- 
note) ;  and  Colony  church,  282, 
285,  393;  financial  aid  to  School, 
q.v.;  attempted  control  of  School, 
304,  313-4;  and  Coll.  Sch.,  q.v.; 
and  Colony  church  orthodoxy, 
392-3 

"Connecticut  Hall,"   (0/  1752)   354 

Cooke,  Samuel  (7.  C.  77 jo),  Trustee, 
{1732)  235 

Copernicus,  theory  of  first  taught  at 
Yale,   {1721)   398 

Coster,  Mrs.  Hester,  College  Street 
lot  of,  325;  sold  to  Collegiate 
School,    {1716)    326 

Cotton,  John,  in  England,  16-7;  in 
Boston,  18;  and  John  Davenport, 
20;  and  Harvard,  24;  ancestor  of 
Rector  Elisha  Williams,  311 

Coventry  (England),  description  of, 
{1600)  1;  Puritanism  in,  6-9; 
Free  School  of,  7,  8,  55 

Cromwell,  Oliver,  friendly  to  New 
Haven  Colony,  67,  68;  and  Say- 
brook   immigration,    193,    368 

Curriculum,  see  under  Collegiate 
School,  and  Yale  College 

Cutler,  Manasseh  (Y.  C.  1765),  on 
College   House,   354 

Cutler,  Timothy  {Harv.  1701),  son- 
in-law  to  Rector  Andrew,  372-3 ; 
character,  376;  elected  Rector  of 
Yale   College,    (/7/p)    372;   sketch 


of,  372-3,  in  Stratford,  401,  in 
Boston,  (after  1722)  410-1;  reads 
Dummer  books,  373 ;  arrives  in 
New  Haven,  373 ;  Episcopal  move- 
ment reasons  for  coming,  399 ; 
promise  of  orthodox  Congrega- 
tional leadership,  394-5 ;  thanks 
Mrs.  Timothy  Woodbridge  for  bell, 
375;  Jonathan  Edwards  quoted  on, 
376;  stops  Commons  rebellion, 
{1721)  387-8;  leaning  toward 
Episcopacy,  399-401,  change  to, 
{1721-2)  401-2,  404;  Episcopalian 
form  of  prayer  used  by,  404;  and 
Boston  Episcopal  Church,  404, 
410-1;  before  Trustees  on  Episco- 
pacy, 405-7;  stands  by  theological 
change,  409 ;  "excused"  from 
Rectorship  by  Trustees,  {1722) 
409;  goes  to  England  for  orders, 
410;  Rector  of  Christ  Church, 
Boston,  410-1 ;  adds  geometry  and 
astronomy  to   College   studies,  423 

Dankers  and  Sluyter,  on  Harvard 
manners,  424 

Davenport,  John,  of  New  Haven 
Colony,  born,  {1597)  1;  Coventry 
(Eng.)  life,  7-9;  at  Oxford  Uni- 
versity, 9-13;  in  London  Church 
of  England  pulpit,  13-6;  turns 
Puritan,  15;  flees  to  Holland, 
{1633)  17;  in  Holland,  20;  returns 
to  England  and  emigrates  with 
Eaton,  {1637)  20;  lands  at 
Boston,  Mass.,  23 ;  Church-state 
theory  of,  22,  27,  59,  61 ;  assists  in 
founding  of  Harvard  College,  24; 
settles  Quinnipiac,  {1638)  25; 
house  of,  35;  at  Meeting-house, 
45;  religious  sternness  of,  48-50; 
educational  plans  of,  52  ff.,  failure 
of,  81 ;  unique  theory  of  public 
education,   55-7;   character  of,   61, 


440 


Index 


99;  failure  of  life-plan,  66,  68, 
88,  95-9;  plan  for  a  Colony  "Col- 
lege," 24,  72  ff. ;  antagonistic  to 
Dunster's  Harvard  tendencies, 
{1654)  75;  efforts  to  start  a  col- 
lege, {1647)  72,  {1652)  74,  {1654- 
5)  76;  financial  appeal  to  Edward 
Hopkins,  {1656-7)  82-4,  gift  prom- 
ised, 84,  left  in  will,  85;  founds 
Hopkins  Grammar  School,  {1660) 
87;  end  of  "College"  plan,  89;  de- 
layed proclamation  of  Charles  II 
by,  {1660)  90-1;  hides  Regicides, 
{1661)  90;  fights  Conn.  Colony 
absorption,  {1662-5)  91  ff. ;  refuses 
General  Assembly  sessions  for 
New  Haven,  161-2;  leaves  New 
Haven  for  Boston,  {1668)  101; 
death  of,  {1670)  101;  influence  on 
James  Pierpont,  127 

Davenport,  John  {Harv.  1687),  of 
Stamford,  at  Harvard,  119,  127; 
sketch  of,  152;  Trustee,  {1714) 
312,  426;  at  Trustees'  meetings, 
284,  319,  340  ff.;  strong  character 
of,  313;  leadership  of  Trustees, 
{1716  ff.)  313,  317,  341;  for  Say- 
brook  site,  317;  votes  for  New 
Haven  site,  320,  supports  New 
Haven,  324,  340;  chosen  Quarterly 
Visitor,  {1716)  323;  on  College 
House  building  committee,  327; 
oration  at  New  Haven  Com- 
mencement, {1718)  358;  against 
Episcopalian  movement,  {1722) 
407,  letter  regarding,  408;  not  for 
Rector  Cutler,  408 

Davie,  Sir  John  {Harv.  1681),  at 
Harvard  College,  122  (footnote)  ; 
sketch  of,  296;  claims  English 
baronetcy,  297 ;  gift  of  books  to 
Collegiate  School,  {1714)  296,  298, 
365 


Degrees,  first  Harvard  Doctor  of 
Divinity,  140;  first  Doctor  of 
Medicine,  {Yale  College,  1723) 
422;  see  Collegiate  School 

Dickinson,  Jonathan  {Coll.  Sch. 
1706),  on  Abraham  Pierson's 
Presbyterianism,  216-7 

Dummer,  Jeremiah,  sketch  of,  290; 
displaced  as  Mass.  agent,  349; 
Conn,  agent,  294-5 ;  and  James 
Pierpont's  famil)^,  124,  290;  and 
Collegiate  School  needs,  290,  292- 
3,  296,  349,  378-9,  293-4,  298-302, 
365;  gives  globes,  296,  322,  378; 
letters  from  Pierpont,  124,  290, 
292,  295-6;  letters  to  Pierpont,  124, 
290,  293,  294;  letters  from  Trus- 
tees, 295,  323,  345,  366;  letters  to 
Trustees,  366,  377;  letter  to 
Timothy  Woodbridge,  296  (foot- 
note) ;  gift  of  books,  {17 14)  298 
ff. ;  result  of  books,  302-3,  and 
Samuel  Johnson,  {1717)  329,  and 
Episcopal  movement,  396  ff. ; 
Episcopal  missionary  purpose  in 
book  gift,  400;  appealed  to  for 
College  House  funds,  {1717)  344 
ff.,  345,  {1718)  350  ff.;  promises 
to  change  Collegiate  School's 
theology  to  suit  donors,  377,  400; 
unsuccessful  later  Elihu  Yale 
efforts,  379 

Dunster,  Henry  (President  of  Harv.), 
theological  troubles  of  and  New 
Haven  "College"  plans,  {1654) 
74-5,   136 

East     Guilford     (Madison,     Conn.), 

227,  278;   scholars  at,    {1716)    318 
Eaton,      Nathaniel,      first      Harvard 

superintendent,   24,  236 
Eaton,    Samuel,    emigrates    to    New 

Haven,    19;     against    Davenport's 

Church-state  theory,  28 


Index 


441 


Eaton,  Theophilus,  sketch  of,  18; 
marriage  to  widow  of  David 
Yale,  19,  291 ;  character  of,  18,  19, 
47 ;  emigrates  with  John  Daven- 
port, (/<5j7)  23;  at  Boston,  24; 
settles  New  Haven,  (/(5j5)  25; 
elected  Governor  of  New  Haven 
Colony,  28 ;  house  of,  described, 
35-6,  Rev.  Joseph  Noyes  in,  {17 16) 
111  (footnote),  {1724)  383; 
Colony  court  of,  48 ;  Mrs.  Moore's 
theological  case,  50-51;  Trustee 
of  Hopkins  bequest,  85;  death  of, 
{165B)   85 

Education,  Dutch  parochial  school 
system,  55;  Conn.,  q.v.;  English 
University,  see  Oxford  and  Cam- 
bridge; English  school,  8,  54; 
Harvard,  q-v.;  New  Amsterdam, 
56;  New  England,  q.v.;  New 
Haven,  q.v.;  Virginia,  56 

Edwards,  Jonathan  (Y.  C.  1720), 
sketch  of  life  {to  1724),  415-6;  at 
Wethersfield    School,    {1717)    324, 

(1718)  361;  opposed  to  Samuel 
Johnson,  329;  admirer  of  Elisha 
Williams,  332,  425-6;  student  at 
New  Haven,  {1719)  370,  376; 
student  life  of,  376;  result  on 
intellectual  life  of,  of  College 
books,  399,  416;  Tutor,  (1724-26) 
415,  417,  great  success  as,  425; 
brilliant  intellectual  attainments 
of,  415-6;  influence  of  Locke  on, 
416;  to  be  minister  at  Northamp- 
ton, Mass.,  {1726)  416,  called 
there,  425 ;  and  "Great  Awaken- 
ing," 417;  quoted,  on  Timothy 
Woodbridge,  150,  on  Rector  Cut- 
ler's good  standing  in  New  Haven, 

(1719)  376,  on  Commons  rebellion, 
{1721)   387;  mentioned,  286,  310 

Eldred,  Mrs.,  Elm  Street  lot  for 
New  Haven  "College,"  {1647)  72; 


James    Pierpont's    parsonage    on, 

128 

Eliot,  Jared  {Coll.  Sch.  1706),  enters 
Collegiate  School,  235;  Guilford 
schoolmaster,  309;  scientific  at- 
tainments of,  235,  309,  410;  read- 
ing Dummer  books,  {1721)  397; 
change  to  Episcopacy,  403 ;  before 
Trustees,  405-7 ;  returns  to  Con- 
gregationalism,  410 

Eliot,  John,  of  Windsor,  letter  to 
Founders  of  Collegiate  School 
supporting  plan  for  Assembly 
charter,  {1701)  168,  170;  helps 
pass  charter,  187-9 

Episcopalians,  in  Mass.,  108 ;  in 
Conn.,  279,  400-1;  alleged  plot  to 
change  Conn.  Colony  to,  {1722) 
411;  authors  in  Dummer  books, 
400;  movement  in  Yale  College, 
{1721-2)  396  ff.;  President  Clap's 
opposition  to,  412 ;  first  liberty  to 
in  the  College,  412;  Elihu  Yale 
and,  378 ;  see  Samuel  Johnson, 
Timothy  Cutler,  etc. 

Fenwick,  George,  194,  224,  227 
Fiske,    Phineas     {Coll.    Sch.    1704), 

enters      Collegiate      School,      234; 

Tutor,     {1706-13)     237,    239,    240, 

250,  252,  254,  330 
Fitch,      John,      gift      to      Collegiate 

School,   {1701)    190-1,  287 
Flynt,    Henry,    Tutor    at    Harvard, 

308;    invited  to  become   Rector  of 

Yale  College,  {1718)  361;  declines 

election,  362,  370 

Gardiner,    John,    surveys    Saybrook, 

193 
General  Assembly,  see  under  Conn. 

Colony 
Geometry,    added    to    Yale    College 

curriculum,    {1719)   423 


442 


Index 


Goffe,  William  (Regicide),  in  New 
Haven,  90,  209,  in  Hadley,  Mass., 
122 

Goodyear,  Deputy  Governor,  44; 
offers  house  for  Nev?  Haven 
"College,"  {1658)  76;  house  of, 
'  76,   173    (and  footnote) 

"Great  Awakening,"  The,  286,  417 

Greek,  theological  use  of  in  Puritan 
education,  55;  in  New  Haven 
school,  {1660)  87;  for  entrance  to 
Harvard,  {1640)  60,  {1684)  118; 
entrance  to  Collegiate  School, 
{lyoi)  199;  in  Collegiate  School 
curriculum,  239;  in  Yale  College 
curriculum,  423 ;  Homer,  and 
Cotton  Mather,  60,  not  read,  423  ; 
New  Testament  studied,  423 

Greenwood,  J.,  sketch  of  first  Col- 
lege House,  355,  also  see  note  to 
title  of  draining 

Gregson,  Thomas,  "Corner"  of  in 
early  New  Haven,  31;  house  of, 
see  note  to  title  of  illustration, 
deserted  {1724),  385 

Guilford,  Conn.,  and  Colony  Col- 
lege {1652),  75  (and  footnote)  ; 
insurrection  against  New  Haven 
Jurisdiction  {1663),  96;  and  New 
Haven,  97;  boys  at  Harvard  {to 
1690),  119 

Hale,  James  (Harv.  1703),  Tutor, 
{1707-9)  252,  retires  as,  254 

"Half-way"  Covenant,  results  of, 
112-3,  115-6,  121,  267 

Harriman,  John,  New  Haven  ordi- 
nary of,  41,  173    (footnote) 

Hart,  John  {Coll.  Sch.  1703),  enters 
Collegiate  School,  234;  Tutor, 
{1703-5)  236-7,  resigns,  250; 
minister  at  East  Guilford,  237; 
scholars  temporarily  with,    {1716) 


318;  reads  Dummer  books,  397; 
change  to  Episcopacy,  {172 1-2) 
403 ;  before  Trustees,  406-7 ;  re- 
turns to  Congregationalism,  409- 
10 

Hartford,  boys  at  Harvard,  {to 
1690)  79,  119;  resident  Collegiate 
School  Trustees  chosen  late  in 
movement,  181-2,  202;  and  site  of 
School,  183,  201,  246,  314-6,  see 
Timothy  Woodbridge  and  Thomas 
Buckingham;  Collegiate  School 
scholars  from,  315;  Wethersfield 
School  scholars  from,  324;  town 
meeting  to  secure  School,  336;  end 
of  agitation  {1718),  361-3;  con- 
tinued antagonism  to  New  Haven 
faction,  369;  final  site  agitation 
unsuccessful  {17 19),  374;  State- 
house  given  by  Assembly  {1719), 
363  ;  see  Conn.  Colony 

Harvard  College,  founding  of, 
{1636)  24,  77;  New  Haven  Colony 
scholars  in,  58-9,  70,  119-20;  New 
Haven  Colony  support  of,  70-1, 
120  (footnote)  ;  President  Dun- 
ster's  difficulties,  74-5,  136;  Conn. 
Colony  scholars  at,  79;  broaden- 
ing change  after  1692  charter,  110, 
137-42;  relation  to  Founding  of 
Collegiate  School,  110,  120,  147, 
408-9 ;  Quincy's  theory  of  influ- 
ence in  do.  denied,  164  (footnote), 
176-7;  graduates  leaving  N.  E., 
120  (footnote)  ;  Class  of  1681,  122 
(footnote)  ;  entrance  requirements 
to,  {1639)  53,  60,. 89,  {1684)  118; 
curriculum,  {1701)  199,  265-6; 
"Physicks"  in,  {1708)  274-5;  reli- 
gious broadening  of,  286,  346,  {in 
18th  Century)  430;  library  of, 
{1711)  293;  teaching  at,  308; 
Thomas  Hollis'  gifts  to,  350 ;  build- 
ings of,    {1720)    354;   life  at,  421; 


Index 


443 


Latin  conversation  of  scholars, 
424 

Hebrew,  in  New  Haven  school, 
{1660)  87;  in  preparation  for 
Harvard,  {1640)  60;  in  Collegiate 
School  curriculum,  239;  in  Yale 
College,  423 

Heminway,  Jacob  {Coll.  Sch.  1704), 
232,  233    (footnote),  234 

Hollis,  Thomas,  Dummer's  appeal 
to  for  gifts  to  Collegiate  School 
(77/5),  350-1 

Hooke,  William,  at  Meeting-house, 
45;  and  Oliver  Cromwell,  67; 
leaves  New  Haven  Colony,  68 ; 
College  Street  lot  sold  to  Colle- 
giate  School,    {1716)    326 

Hooker,  Daniel  {Harv.  1700),  Tutor, 
{1702-3)   236 

Hooker,  Thomas,  in  England,  16; 
settles    Conn.    Colony,    25 ;    broad 

.  political  theories  of,  27,  111  (foot- 
note), 113-4;  and  Abraham  Pier- 
son,  Sr.,  206 

Hopkins,  Edward,  emigrates,  19; 
marriage  to  Mrs.  Anne  Yale,  19 ; 
settles  at  Hartford,  25 ;  career  in 
Hartford,  82-3;  critical  attitude 
toward  New  Haven  Theocracy, 
61,  84;  returns  to  England,  82; 
legacy  to  New  Haven  and  Conn. 
Colonies   for   school,    83-4,    344 

Hopkins  Grammar  School  (of  Had- 
ley,  Mass.),  85  (footnote),  122; 
(of  New  Haven),  233,  234,  and 
see  New  Haven  Colony  grammar 
school 

Johnson,  Samuel  {Coll.  Sch.  1714), 
sketch  of,  309;  self-education  of, 
309-10,  329-30,  {1721)  397  ff.; 
Tutor,  {1716-9)  321,  322,  323,  327, 
330,    343,    350,    361,    369,     {1721) 


resigns,  402;  character  of,  329; 
and  Dummer  library,  329-30,  365, 
397;  receives  M.  A.  degree,  330; 
moves  into  new  College  House, 
{1718)  330,  361;  difficulty  in  con- 
trolling Wethersfield  scholars, 
{1719)  370-1;  father's  house  in 
Guilford,  309,  389;  intellectual 
awakening  of,  {1721-2)  398; 
teaches  Newton  and  Locke  to 
scholars,  422;  leaning  to  Episco- 
pacy, 311,  399;  Congregational 
minister  in  West  Haven,  {1721) 
402,  404;  changes  to  Episcopal 
Church,  {1722)  403  ;  before  Trus- 
tees, {1722)  405-7;  stands  by 
Episcopal  change,  409-10;  leaves 
West  Haven  church,  410;  goes  to 
England  and  receives  degrees  at 
Oxford  and  Cambridge,  410;  ap- 
pointed Episcopal  missionary  to 
N.  E.,  410;  and  Bishop  Berkeley's 
gifts,  410,  412;  first  President  of 
King's  College,  410,  412;  corre- 
spondence with  President  Clap 
about  Episcopacy  and  Yale  Col- 
lege, 412;  death  of,  {1772)  410; 
quoted,  on  Dummer  books,  298;  on 
Saybrook  site  struggle,  316,  317; 
on  General  Assembly  and  Trus-' 
tees  site  hearing,  {1717)  341-2; 
on  Commencement,  {17 18)  357, 
360-1;  on  Saybrook  book  fight, 
365-6;  on  Episcopal  Church 
movement  in  Yale  College,  402  ff. 

Killingworth  (Clinton,  Conn.),  boys 
at  Harvard  {to  1690),  119;  low 
tax  rating  of,  {1701)  202;  descrip- 
tion of,  {1694-1707)  227,  242; 
First  Meeting-house,  228 ;  Second 
Meeting-house,  229-30;  school, 
230  (footnote),  239;  people  in, 
{1701-7)    242;   contest  over  Colle- 


444 


Index 


giate  School  remaining  there,  204, 
246-50 
King  Philip's  War,  128,  213 
King's    College    (Columbia    Univer- 
sity), 410,  412 
Knight,     Madam,     on    James    Pier- 
pont,    123;    journey    of,    224;    de- 
scriptions of  Conn,  life  and  people, 
{1704.)  260-2,  389-90 

Lamberton's  "Great  Shippe,"  foun- 
ders, 64-5,  72,  73 

Latin,  Cheever's  "Accidence,"  53 ; 
New  Testament  reading  in  Puri- 
tan education,  55,  {1701-26)  309; 
in  New  Haven  school,  {1660)  87; 
in  preparation  for  Harvard, 
{1639)  53,  60,  89,  {1684)  118;  for 
Collegiate  School,  199;  in  Colle- 
giate School  curriculum,  239,  423 ; 
scholars'  conversation  in,  240,  424; 
in  Yale  College  curriculum,  423 

Latitudinarianism,  at  Harvard,  142, 
407,  409 

Laud,  Archbishop  William,  at  Ox- 
ford, 12;  and  John  Davenport,  15- 
7,  22;  and  Puritans,  20;  im- 
prisonment, 67 

Law,  Jonathan,  writes  New  Haven 
site  argument,   {1716)    337,  341 

Laws,  of  Collegiate  School  {1701), 
199;  of  Yale  College  {1724.  #.), 
418,  420 

Leete,  Governor  William,  96,  97 

Leverett,  John  (President  of  Harv.), 
theologically  progressive,  113  ;  in- 
troduces new  theology  at  Harvard, 
346-7;  Cotton  Mather  against, 
346;  mentioned,  141,  308 

Libraries,  New  Haven  Colony, 
{1660)  87,  bought  by  James  Pier- 
pont,  144-5 ;  Collegiate  School, 
q.v.;  owned  in  New  Haven,  (1700) 
267,     {1720)     389,    391-2;     Doctor 


Salmon's,  {1713)  294;  Harvard's, 
(77//)  293;  in  N.  E.,  {1714)  301; 
Abraham  Pierson's,  211-2  (and 
footnote),  239 

Literature  (English),  and  Puritans, 
12;  in  N.  E.,  (/7/0)  266  ff.;  New 
Haven  limitations  in  {1721),  391- 
2;  small  attention  to  in  College 
School   curriculum,   310 

Locke,  John,  studied  in  English 
universities,  266  (footnote)  ;  taught 
in  Yale  College,  (///p)  422, 
{1724-6)  422,  423;  and  Jonathan 
Edwards,  416,  422;  mentioned,  273 

Logic,  in  Harvard  curriculum,  {to 
17 10)  266;  in  Collegiate  School 
curriculum,  {1702-7)  239;  in  Yale 
College   curriculum,    {1724-6)    423 

Lord,  Benjamin  {Coll.  Sch.  17 14), 
Tutor,  {1715-6)  311,  318;  voted, 
on  Commencements,  {17 10-4) 
257-8;  on  Collegiate  School  curric- 
ulum, 310,  423 

Lynde,  Nathaniel,  Assembly  Deputy, 
{1701)  186  (footnote)  ;  Collegiate 
School  Treasurership  offered  to, 
{1701)  203,  246;  sends  scholar, 
234;  gives  house  in  Saybrook  to 
School,  252,  283;  description  of 
house,  254  (footnote)  ;  house  of 
mentioned,  307,  323;  Saybrook 
Platform  drawn  up  in  house  of, 
{1708)   283 

Madison   (Conn.),  see  East  Guilford 
Market-place,      see      New      Haven 

Colony 
Massachusetts  Colony,  founded,  15; 
connection  with  England,  21 ;  com- 
pared with  New  Haven  Colony, 
21,  26,  28,  413;  restricted  suffrage 
of,  27;  bad  results  of  franchise 
theory,  112;  broadening  of  fran- 
chise,   113;    early   schools    in,    54; 


Index 


445 


early  theology  in,  75 ;  troubles 
with  Charles  II,  89-90,  108-9;  new 
Puritanism  of,  101,  393 ;  charter, 
{of  1692)  110;  eflfects  of  new 
charter,  139-42;  decline  of  origi- 
nal church  in,  112-3;  eflFort  at 
church  reorganization,  156,  176, 
278 ;  failure  of  traditional  church, 
393;  witchcraft  In,  113;  Presby- 
terianism  in,  106,  218;  Episcopa- 
lian Church  in,  108,  404 

Mathematics,  in  Collegiate  School 
curriculum,  {1701-16)  239,  310, 
423;  in  Harvard  curriculum,  265; 
Elihu  Yale's  promised  instruments, 
379 

Mather,  Azariah  {Coll.  Sch.  1705), 
Tutor,  {1709-10)  ZS'^;  takes  Say- 
brook  scholars,  {1716)  323,  {1718) 
365;  in  Saybrook  book  struggle, 
{17 18)    365 

Mather,  Cotton,  educated  by  Ezekiel 
Cheever,  60;  against  new  Mass. 
theology,  {1692)  113,  139;  advice 
on  Collegiate  School  Founding, 
{1701)  164,  307-8;  writings  of, 
266;  opposition  to  Harvard, 
{1718)  346-7 ;  interest  in  Collegiate 
School  orthodoxy,  346-7 ;  letter  to 
Elihu  Yale  for  Collegiate  School 
aid,  {1718)  347,  351,  407;  names 
School  "Yale  College,"  349,  351; 
informed  of  Episcopalian  move- 
ment in  Yale  College,  {1722)  404, 
408 ;  quoted  on  James  Pierpont, 
123,  on   Gurdon  Saltonstall,  280-1 

Mather,  Increase,  secures  Mass. 
charter,  {1692)  110;  loss  of  Mass. 
leadership,  112-3,  137-42,  346; 
advice  on  Collegiate  School 
Founding,  {1701)  136-42,  165,  346; 
retires  from  Presidency  of  Har- 
vard College,  142 


Mather,  Samuel  {Harv.  1671),  of 
Windsor,  sketch  of,  149;  Trustee, 
181;  not  at  Trustees*  meetings, 
182,  196,  312,  317,  337,  340,  414; 
for  New  Haven  site  of  Collegiate 
School,  {1701)  201  (footnote)  ;  for 
Hartford  site,  201  (footnote),  317; 
sends  scholar  to  School,  {1702) 
234;  retired  from  Trustees,  415, 
426 

Meeting-houses,  see  Killinffivorth, 
Neiv  Haven 

Metaphysics,  taught  in  Collegiate 
School,  {1701-7)  239,  273;  in 
Harvard,  266;  in  Yale  College, 
{1724-6)   423 

Middletown  (Conn.),  boys  at  Har- 
vard, {to  1690)  119;  Collegiate 
School  voted  for  by  Lower  House, 
{17 17)    341 

Miles,  (Captain)  John,  New  Haven 
tavern  of,  173  (and  footnote), 
326,  362,  {1724)  384;  Upper  House 
at,  174,  183,  184;  Trustees  at,  340 

Milford  (Conn.),  stockade  of,  32 
(footnote)  ;  stands  by  New  Haven 
Jurisdiction,  64,  97;  votes  for 
"Colony  College,"  {1654)  76;  boys 
at  Harvard,  {to  1690)  119;  lapse 
in  ministry,  120;  Samuel  Andrew 
called,  121;  Collegiate  School 
Seniors  in   {17 16  ff.),  250 

Milton,  John,  and  Saybrook  settle- 
ment, 193 ;  poems  of  carried  by 
army  chaplain,    {1711)   301 

Mix,  Stephen,  helps  teach  Wethers- 
field  scholars,    {1716-9)    332 

Moss,  Joseph  {Harv.  1699),  of 
Derby,  156,  333;  assistant  to 
Tutor  Samuel  Johnson,  330,  350, 
371 ;  gift  of  land  to  Yale  College, 
377;  purchases  from  Captain 
Browne,    {1721)    389 

Munson,  Captain  John,  Yale  College 


446 


Index 


Steward,    {1721)    387;   student   re- 
bellion against,   {1721)   387 

New  England,  settled  by  Puritans, 
14;  Confederacy,  64;  left  alone 
by  Charles  I,  108;  troubles  with 
Charles  II,  89-90,  108-10;  under 
William  and  Mary,  110;  religious 
liberty  of  settlers,  429;  Puritan 
Theocracy  of,  see  Puritans 

Education,  Latin  in,  53 ;  early 
need  of,  54,  55;  compared  with 
others,  56;  low  condition  of, 
{1650)  79-80,  {1700)  265,  {1721) 
392;  standard  of,  {1701)  239,  260, 
264  ff.,  273 ;  "too  much  learning 
in,"   379-80 

New  Haven  Church-state,  prelimi- 
nary "Covenant,"  {1637)  20-1; 
founded,  {1639)  27-8;  compared 
with  Mass.  and  Plymouth,  21,  26, 
28,  96,  with  Conn.  Colony,  26,  27, 
96;  church  meetings  of,  43;  stern 
religious  laws,  47-8 ;  discipline,  48- 
51;  restricted  franchise,  27,  28; 
failure  of,  66,  68,  95-9,  116,  429; 
end  of,  96,  98,  121;  see  John 
Davenport 

Colony  {1638-65),  settled,  {1637- 
8)  25-6,  as  a  Separatist  State,  23; 
criminal  laws  of,  48 ;  early  com- 
mercial plans  of,  19,  30  ff.,  61-5, 
failure  of,  66,  74,  116,  388;  con- 
flict with  Dutch  New  Amsterdam, 
62-6,  74;  "Great  Shippe,"  64; 
attempt  to  secure  charter  from 
Cromwell,  66-7;  educational  laws, 
80,  87 ;  refusal  to  abandon  settle- 
ment, 68;  and  Charles  II,  89- 
91;  hostile  to  Quakers,  90,  106-7; 
hides  Regicides  of  Charles  I,  90; 
slow  proclamation  of  Charles  II, 
90;  absorbed  by  Conn.  Colony 
under     Winthrop's     charter,      (0/ 


1662)  91-9;  separate  identity  lost, 
{1665)  98;  departure  of  Daven- 
port, {1668)  101 

(1665-1701),  lapse  in  ministry, 
120-1;  James  Pierpont  called, 
{1685)  121;  character  of  people, 
{1685-1700)  129  ff.;  dress,  {1685 
ff.)  130,  184;  and  Collegiate  School 
site  question,  183 

{1701-26),  and  Collegiate  School 
site  question,  201,  raises  subscrip- 
tion, 319,  chosen  as  site,  {1716) 
318-9,  322-3;  manners  of  people, 
261-2;  dress,  357,  388-91;  sells 
lots  to  Collegiate  School,  325-6; 
land  given  to  School,  326;  popula- 
tion of,  {1720)  381;  books  owned 
in,  {1721)  389,  391-2;  Episcopal 
Church  in,   {1750)   412 

Colony  College,  first  considered 
by  Davenport  at  Harvard  Found- 
ing, 24,  71  (footnote)  ;  "Oyster- 
shell-fields"  allotted  to,  71,  ordered 
used  for  "College,"  86;  Mrs. 
Eldred's  lot  given  by  Town,  72, 
ordered  used  for  "College,"  86; 
worry  over  Harvard  situation, 
{1654)  74-5,  136;  Colony  agita- 
tion for,  {1652)  75,  {1654)  76-7, 
83;  Governor  Goodyear  offers 
house,  76;  supposed  founded,  77, 
86;  Edward  Hopkins'  bequest,  83- 
4,  trust  given  to  Town  committee 
by  Davenport,  86;  end  of  "Col- 
lege" plan,  {1660)  85-9;  project 
renewed,  134;  see  Collegiate 
School 

Colony  {"Hopkins")  Grammar 
School,  begun,  {1660)  81,  87-8; 
low  condition  of,  88;  collapse  of, 
89,  117-8;  new  start  for,  {1684) 
118;  girls'  education,  118;  in  old 
schoolhouse,  {1685)  129;  new 
building,    {1718)    360,   386 


Index 


447 


Jurisdiction  {164.3),  established, 
64;  revolt  of  outside  plantations, 
96-8;   end  of,   98-9 

Market-place,  {1639)  31,  58; 
{1685)   128;   {1724)  383-6 

Meeting-houses:  First  built, 
{164.0)  31;  description  of,  31-2; 
services  in,  43-7;  Second,  128-9, 
418;  first  bell  in,  129,  385;  en- 
larged, {1668)  384;  description  of, 
{1724.)  384;  Assembly  sessions  in, 
174,  184-91,  288,  338,  362;  College 
Commencements  in,  {1717)  330, 
{1718)  358-60;  College  students 
at  services  in,  402 

Schools,  the  .  first  schoolhouse 
ordered,  {1641)  54,  do.  erected, 
{1641)  58;  compared  with  others, 
55-6;  unique  American  experiment, 
57;  theological  purpose  of,  76; 
early  preparation  for  Harvard 
College,  58,  70-1,  74,  119;  failure 
of,  60,  79-80;  Grammar  School, 
failure  of,  77,  78,  120,  end  of,  81; 
restricted  education  of  girls  in 
Davenport  Colony,  77 ;  "Dame 
Schools,"  78;  curriculum,  53,  79; 
school  code,   {1656)   80 

Toiun,  description  of,  {1639)  30 
ff.,  {16S5)  128,  {1720)  381  ff.,  391; 
manners  and  dress,  {1650)  38, 
{1685)  130;  life  in,  {1639-50)  37, 
40,  {1721)  388-91;  early  houses 
in,  31,  33,  383;  sumptuary  laws, 
38 ;  church  meetings,  43 ;  inven- 
tories, {1639)  36,  {1685)  130; 
books  owned  in,  {1639-50)  87, 
{1700)  267,  {1720)  389,  391-2; 
gaol,  {1640)  32,  173,  {1724)  386; 
watch,  32,  41,  129;  watch-house, 
32,  129;  stocks,  32,  48,  129,  {1724) 
386;  streets,  31,  37,  {1720)  382; 
stockade,  32  (and  footnote),  128; 
"quarters,"  33;   fences,  33;   pound, 


37;  wharves,  37,  173,  {1724)  382; 
causeways,  31,  45,  128;  creeks, 
30-1,  382;  taverns,  (Andrews')  41, 
(Harriman's)  41,  Miles',  q-v.; 
drummer,  41,  129;  Town  Crier, 
129;  "Oystershell-fields,"  37,  71; 
burial  ground,  32,  173,  {1718) 
386;  gates,  32  (footnote),  128, 
382;  Courthouse,  173,  {1718)  360; 
maps  of,  {1640)  39,  (Brown's, 
1724),  174,  382-3,  390,  Wads- 
worth's,  {for  1748)  354;  Pierpont 
elms,  383 ;  "Sabbath-day"  houses, 
383;  bell  on  Meeting-house,  384; 
new  Statehouse,  {in  1724)  386, 
{of  1763)    386 

Newark,  N.  J.,  settled  by  old  New 
Haven  Theocracy  remnant,  98-9, 
209;  description  of,  {1670-97)  213 
if.;  ministers  in,  {after  1692)  218- 
9;  calls  Samuel  Johnson  {1716), 
321 

Newington  (Conn.),  Elisha  Williams 
minister  in  {1719-25),  374;  Gen- 
eral Assembly  help  to  settle  new 
minister    {1725-6),  427 

Newton,  Sir  Isaac,  gift  of  books  to 
Collegiate  School,  {1714)  298-9, 
result  of  to  Samuel  Johnson,  329, 
365;  scientific  theories  of  taught  in 
Yale  College,  {1724-6)  422,  423; 
mentioned,  273,  301,  397,  398 

Noyes,  James  {Har<v.  1659),  sketch 
of,  153;  conservative  in  church- 
synod  movement,  157;  letter  on 
gift  of  books  to  Collegiate  School, 
{1701)  169;  Trustee,  181,  312;  at 
Trustees'  meetings,  196,  284,  319- 
22,  340;  for  Saybrook  School  site, 
201,  314,  317,  319;  Presbyterian- 
ism  of,  278 ;  for  New  Haven  site, 
320,  322,  340;  letter  from  Salton- 
stall  on  Woodbridge  conference, 
374;   death  of,  426 


448 


Index 


Noyes,  Joseph  {Coll.  Sch.  l^og), 
Tutor,  {1710-5)  254,  257,  307; 
resigns  Tutorship,  311;  minister 
at  New  Haven  {1715),  319;  mar- 
riage, 320;  poor  teaching  of,  308- 
11,  330;  conservative  in  theology, 
310-1;  for  New  Haven  site  for 
Collegiate  School,  319;  secures 
deciding  Trustees'  votes  for  New 
Haven,  320;  helps  instruct  scholars 
in  New  Haven,  {17 16)  323,  {17 17) 
327,  329,  330,  {1718)  343,  350,  361 
living  in  Eaton  house,  323,  383 
and  student  rebellion,  {1719)  371 
preaching  to  College  students, 
{1721  ff.)  402;  uninteresting 
preacher,  418;  teaches  theology  to 
Jonathan   Edwards,   415 

Noyes,  Moses  (Harv.  1659),  sketch 
of,  154,  196;  for  Saybrook  site  of 
Collegiate  School,  201,  317,  319, 
320,  322;  for  Hartford  site  {17 17), 
340;  Trustee,  254,  312,  426;  at 
Trustees'  meetings,  284,  319-22; 
opposition  to  Rector  Cutler,  409; 
strong  conservative,  154;  quoted, 
on  reasons  for  Collegiate  School 
Founding,  137,  409;  on  James 
Pierpont,  408-9 ;  on  change  from 
Saybrook,   409 

Noyes,  Nicholas,  poetry  of,  272 

"Oratory,"  in  New  Haven  schools, 
(1660)  88;  in  Yale  College  curric- 
ulum, {1724-6)  423 

Oxford  University,  {in  1600)  9-12; 
graduates  in  N.  E.,  264;  Elihu 
Yale's  proposed  gift  to,  293;  de- 
gree given  to  Samuel  Johnson, 
{1722)  410;  Locke  studied  in,  266 
(footnote) 

Pardee,  George,  New  Haven  school- 
master, 89,  117;  town  bell-ringer, 
129;  ferryman,  190 


Peck,  Jeremiah,  New  Haven  Colony 
grammar-school   master,   87-8,   119 

Physics,  studied  in  Collegiate  School, 
{1701-14)  239,  266,  273;  Abraham 
Pierson's  treatise  on,  239-40,  398; 
studied  in  Harvard  College,  266, 
274-5;  Noadiah  Russell's  theories 
in,  275-6;  in  Yale  College  curric- 
ulum,  {1724-6)  423 

Pierpont,  James  {Harv.  1681),  called 
to  New  Haven  church,  {1685) 
121;  career  of,  {to  1685)  122; 
arrives  in  New  Haven,  122,  125-6; 
house  of,  {1685)  127-8,  {1724) 
383;  sermons  of,  123;  character 
of,  122-3,  302-3;  and  English 
Pierrepont  family  claim,  124-5 ; 
personal  appearance  of,  123-4, 
197;  Cotton  Mather  on,  123,  302-3; 
Moses  Noyes  on,  408-9;  and 
Andros,  132;  marriages,  133,  145 
(footnote)  ;  leader  in  Collegiate 
School  Founding  movement,  {i6g2- 
1701)  144-7,  157,  165  ff. ;  buys 
New  Haven  public  library,  144; 
sympathetic  with  conservative 
Harvard  party,  147;  conservative 
in  church-synod  movement,  157, 
284;  sends  "Instructions"  to  Sewall 
for  Collegiate  School  charter, 
{1701)  167;  changes  charter  draft, 
176-81;  secures  prior  "Founding" 
by  ministers,  {1701)  169,  171,  303; 
Trustee,  181;  leads  organization- 
meeting  of  Trustees,  196  ff. ;  choice 
of  Abraham  Pierson  for  Rector, 
202;  at  Trustees'  meetings,  196, 
284;  midway  position  on  Saybrook 
Platform,  {1708)  147,  278  ff.,  284 
ff.,  392;  for  Saybrook  site  of  Col- 
legiate School,  201,  246,  314,  315; 
leadership  of  Trustees,  {1701-14.) 
202,  290,  302,  312;  sends  scholars, 
232,    234;    and    Collegiate    School 


Index 


449 


and  Colony  church,  277-8,  282; 
letter  to  '  Jeremiah  Duramer  on 
family  claim,  124;  letter  to 
Dummer  on  Collegiate  School 
needs,  124,  290,  292,  295-6;  se- 
cures books,  298 ;  letter  to  Sir 
John  Davie,  296 ;  suggests  Elihu 
Yale  as  possible  benefactor,  {17 lo) 
292;  death  of,  {1714)  302,  305, 
426,  bad  result  of  for  School,  312, 
408-9;  College  House  result  of 
books,  305 

Pierpont,  James,  Jr.  {Coll.  Sch. 
1718),  Commencement  oration  of, 
{1718)  358;  Tutor,  {1722-4)  409; 
resigns,   415 

Pierson,  Abraham,  96,  97;  sketch  of, 
205  ff.;  library  of,  211;  death, 
211 

Pierson,  Abraham,  Jr.  {Harv.  1668), 
birthplace  of,  206  (footnote)  ;  New 
Haven  education  of,  81  (footnote), 
88  (footnote),  119,  208;  sketch  of, 
205  ff.;  at  Harvard,  208;  studies 
theology  in  Milford,  208 ;  mar- 
riage, 209;  assists  father  as 
Newark  minister,  209  if.;  life  in 
Newark,  210  ff. ;  great  wainscot 
chair  of,  210  (footnote)  ;  minister 
in  Newark,  212  ff . ;  Presbyterian- 
ism  of,  217,  278;  leaves  Newark, 
{1692)  218;  at  Greenwich 
(Conn.),  219;  called  to  ministry 
in  Killingworth,  {1694)  219; 
active  in  Founding  of  Collegiate 
School,  145,  157,  165,  166,  167,  168, 
186,  202;  conservative  in  church- 
synod  movement,  157;  Trustee, 
181;  at  Trustees'  meetings,  196; 
elected  first  Rector  of  Collegiate 
School,  202,  219;  Killingworth 
house  of,  225  (footnote),  230-2; 
begins  teaching  Collegiate  School, 
{1702)  234;  secures  scholars,  235; 


family  of,  235  (and  footnote)  ; 
teaching  of,  239-40,  273,  422; 
physics  text-book  of,  208,  239-40, 
273,  398;  trouble  over  School  site, 
246  ff. ;  scientific  theories  of,  273, 
301;  Rector's  salary  of,  247;  estate 
of,  243-4;  death  of,  {1707)  243, 
250,  426  ;  gravestone  of,  228  ;  char- 
acter of,  213 ;  personal  character- 
istics of,  197,  212-3;  library  of, 
211-2   (and  footnote),  239 

Piggott,  George,  confers  with  Col- 
lege Tutors  regarding  Episcopacy, 
{/721)    403 

Plymouth  Colony,  political  theory  of 
compared  with  New  Haven,  21,  27 

Presbyterianism,  Mass.  cabal,  106; 
church  theory  of,  135;  movement 
in  Conn,  toward,  157,  217  ff . ; 
compared  with  Congregationalism, 
218;  lapse  of  in  Conn,  and  rise  in 
N.  J.,  219;  and  Saybrook  Plat- 
form, 278  ff. 

Prout,  John  {Coll.  Sch.  1708),  of 
New  Haven,  elected  Collegiate 
School  Treasurer,  {1717)  338; 
house  of  in  New  Haven,  {1724) 
383 

Prudden,  Peter,  emigrates,  20;  in 
Milford,  64 

Ptolemaic  theory,  taught  in  Collegi- 
ate School,  273,  398,  422 

Puritans,  rise  of  in  England,  8,  13-5; 
at   Oxford,    {1600)    12;    and   Eng- 
lish   culture,    12;    last    important 
emigration    to    N.    H.    Colony    in 
the    Davenport    party,    {1637)    18 
and  Laud,  23;   and  the  Bible,  55 
success    of    in    England,     66,     68 
final  failure  of,  89;  and  Charles  I, 
22;  and  Charles  H,  89,  105 

Puritans  (N.  E.),  settle  Mass.,  14-5; 
differences  between  several  settle- 
ments, 21-2,  26-7;   and  Bible,   55; 


450 


Index 


and  Charles  II,  89 ;  second  genera- 
tion's changes  from,  100;  crest  of 
political  power,  106;  political 
theory  of,  110-1;  failure  of,  112-3; 
decline  of,  135,  137-42;  retarding 
results  of  in  18th  Century,  429-30 

Quakers,  New  Haven  persecutions 
of,  90 ;  protected  by  Charles  II, 
105-7 

Queen  Anne's  War,    {1702)    393 

Quincy,  President,  of  Harvard,  in- 
accurate statements  regarding 
Harvard's  influence  in  Collegiate 
School  Founding,  164,  176-7;  on 
Cotton   Mather,   346,   349 

Quinnipiac,  discovered,  {1637)  25; 
settled  by  Davenport  and  Eaton, 
25-6 

Randolph,  Edward,  in  Mass.,  109 

Regicides,  Colonels  Goffe  and 
Whalley  in  New  Haven,  90,  209; 
in    Hadley    (Mass.),    122 

Rhetoric,  in  Yale  College  curric- 
ulum,  {1724.-6)  423 

Rosewell,  Richard,  of  New  Haven, 
chosen  Collegiate  School  Treas- 
urer, {1701)  203;  library  of, 
(1701)    268 

Ruggles,  Thomas  (Harv.  i6qo), 
minister  at  Guilford,  156;  Trustee, 
{1710-28)  312,  426;  for  Saybrook 
site  for  Collegiate  School,  317; 
votes  for  New  Haven  site,  320, 
340;  chosen  Quarterly  Visitor  to 
School,  {1716)  323;  on  College 
House  building  committee,  327;  at 
Trustees'  meetings,  340;  question 
of  age  of  as  Trustee,  340;  and 
Saybrook  book  fight,  {17 1 8)  365, 
367 

Russel,  Samuel  {Harv.  1681),  called 
to  be  minister  at  Branford,  121-2; 


previous  career,  122;  active  in  Col- 
legiate School  Founding,  145 ; 
"Founders'  Meeting"  at  Branford 
house  of,  168-71 ;  house  of  de- 
scribed, 168;  Trustee  {1701-30), 
203,  246,  312,  426;  sends  scholars, 
234;  at  Trustees'  meetings,  284, 
340;  for  Saybrook  site  for  Colle- 
giate School,  317,  319;  for  New 
Haven  site,  320,  340;  chosen 
Quarterly  Visitor  to  School,  {1716) 
323 ;  on  College  House  building 
committee,  327;  and  student  re- 
bellions,   {1719)    370,    {1721)    387 

Russell,  Noadiah  {Harv.  1681),  edu- 
cated in  New  Haven,  119;  student 
at  Harvard,  122  (footnote)  ; 
sketch  of,  149;  Trustee  {1701-13), 
181;  at  Trustees'  meetings,  196, 
284;  for  Hartford  site,  201;  scien- 
tific theories  of,  275-6 ;  death  of, 
{1713)  312,  426;  mentioned,  254, 
425 

Russell,  Samuel  {Coll.  Sch.  17 T2), 
Tutor,    {17 1 4.-6)    311 

Russell,  William  {Coll.  Sch.  1709), 
Tutor,  {1713-4.)  254,  307;  declines 
Yale   College   Rectorship,  425 

Saltonstall,  Gurdon  {Harv.  1684), 
sketch  of,  155,  280-1;  description 
of,  358;  strong  character  of,  280-1, 
313;  progressive  on  church-synod 
movement,  157,  271;  active  in  Col- 
legiate School  Founding,  165,  186; 
sends  scholar,  235 ;  elected  Gov- 
ernor of  Conn.,  281;  and  Saybrook 
Platform,  278  ff.,  281  ff . ;  and 
Episcopal  Church,  279;  helps  Col- 
legiate School  book  gift,  297,  305- 
6;  interest  in  preserving  Conn, 
orthodoxy,  394;  helps  settle  Colle- 
giate School  site  question,  304,  305, 
341;   for   Saybrook   site,   314;    and 


Index 


451 


College  House,  321,  327,  350,  354; 
East  Haven  house  of,  327  (and 
footnote)  ;  at  Collegiate  School 
Commencements,  330,  356  flf. ; 
orders  Saybrook  people  to  give  up 
College  books,  364,  366;  urges 
election  of  permanent  Rector  for 
Yale  College,  369,  371-2;  leader- 
ship of  Collegiate  School,  394; 
Moses  Noyes  against,  409;  letter 
to  James  Noyes  regarding  Timothy 
Woodbridge,  374;  re-elected  Gov- 
ernor over  Woodbridge-Bucking- 
ham  opposition,  {1719)  374-5 ; 
charges  libel  against  Woodbridge, 
375;  gift  to  Yale  College,  377; 
attempts  settlement  of  Episcopal 
movement  in  College,  {1722)  404, 
failure,  406-8 ;  dravfs  up  amended 
College  charter,  {1723)  414-5 ; 
death,  426;  Cotton  Mather  on, 
280-1 
Saybrook  (Old),  settled,  25;  Colle- 
giate School  organization  meeting 
in,  {1701)  192-203;  description  of, 
{1701)  192-5,  {1709-16)  251,  308, 
{1718  ff.)  368;  Collegiate  School 
removes  from  Killingworth  to, 
{1707)  250;  and  Collegiate  School 
site  contest,  201,  246-50,  308,  319; 
smallpox  in,  {1716)  318;  School's 
removal  to  New  Haven,  (1716) 
323 ;  a  few  scholars  left  at 
Azariah  Mather's,  {1716)  323, 
{1718)  365;  College  House  voted 
to  be  built  in,  {1716)  306, 
363;  first  Commencement  in, 
{1702)  232;  Commencements  in, 
{1710-14)  257-8;  Saybrook  Plat- 
form drawn  up  in,  {1708)  283; 
Collegiate  School  books  removed 
from,  {1718)  364,  367;  end  of  in 
Yale  annals,  {1718)  367;  Yale 
College  monument  in,  368 


Saybrook  Platform,  times  not  ready, 
{1680)  135;  preparation  for, 
{1703)  278;  synod  called  by  Gov- 
ernor Saltonstall,  281;  James  Pier- 
pont's  conservative  leadership  in, 
282;  meeting  held  at  Saybrook, 
{1708)  283;  description  of,  284-5; 
purpose  of  to  preserve  Conn,  ortho- 
doxy, 392;  conservative  result  of, 
on  Collegiate  School  and  Conn. 
Colony,  346,  393,  430;  Yale  Col- 
lege officers  have  to  accept,  409, 
417;  Rector  Williams  subscribes 
to,  427 

Schoolhouses,  in  New  Haven:  first, 
{1641)  31,  54,  58,  {1685)  129, 
{1724)  386,  {1756)  386;  Hopkins 
Grammar  Schoolhouse  {1718),  360, 
386;  in  Killingworth,  230  (foot- 
note), 239 

Schools,  first  in  N.  E.,  54;  Coventry 
Free  School,  7,  8,  55;  general 
failure  of  in  colonial  N.  E.,  79-80, 
265,  392;  see  Neiv  Haven 

Science,  in  Connecticut,  {17  01- 14) 
211  ff.,  in  Collegiate  School,  273, 
301 ;  taught  in  Yale  College, 
{1719)  422,  {1724)  MZ-Z\  see 
Samuel  Johnson,  Isaac  Neivton, 
etc. 

Separatists  (English),  see  Puritans; 
in  New  Haven  Colony,  23 

Sewall,  Samuel,  and  witchcraft, 
{1692)  113;  conservative  in  theol- 
ogy, 137;  helps  suggest  Collegiate 
School  Charter,  164,  Clap's  account 
of  do.,  159;  Founder's  letter  to, 
{1701)  165,  reply  to,  166,  176; 
draft  of  charter  by,  176-81;  letter 
to  Trustees  concerning  charter,  179- 
80  (footnote)  ;  curious  about  site 
of  School,  180  (footnote)  ;  enter- 
tains Timothy  Woodbridge  in 
Boston,     177;    friendly    to    Colle- 


452 


Index 


giate  School,  180  (footnote)  ;  gift 
of  books  to  School,  (/707)  180 
(footnote) 

Slaves,  Samuel  Sewall's  first  Ameri- 
can tract  against,  {1701)  166;  of 
Timothy  Woodbridge  and  Elisha 
Williams,  333 

Smith,  Samuel  {Coll.  Sch.  17 13), 
offered  Tutorship,  {1716)  311; 
refuses  Tutorship,  318;  re-elected, 
321;  again  refuses,  322,  329 

Smith,  William  (Y.  C.  17 19),  Tutor, 
{1722-4.)  409;  resigns,  415 

Steele,  Richard,  gives  books  to  Col- 
legiate  School,   397 

Stiles,  Ezra,  quoted:  on  Abraham 
Pierson's  Presbyterianism,  218;  on 
Pierson  parsonage  in  Killing- 
worth,  230;  on  Jacob  Heminway, 
232;  on  Timothy  Cutler,  373;  on 
Elihu  Yale  portrait,  378  (foot- 
note) 

Stoddard,  Solomon,  of  Northampton 
(Mass.),  235,  262 

Stratford  (Conn.),  boys  at  Harvard, 
{to  i6go)  119;  Episcopal  Church 
in,  279,  399-400;  releases  Timothy 
Cutler  to  become  Rector  of  Yale 
College,   373 

Street,  Nicholas,  assistant  to  John 
Davenport  in  New  Haven  church, 
92;  New  Haven  minister,  120-1 

Street,  Samuel,  Hopkins  Grammar 
School  teacher,  117 

Surveying,  in  Collegiate  School 
curriculum,  423 

Tailor,  Lieut.  Gov.  of  Mass.,  receives 
Elihu  Yale's  gift  for  Collegiate 
School,  {1718)  351;  acts  for  Elihu 
Yale  at  Commencement,  {1718) 
356  ff. 


Theology,  in  New  Haven  education, 
{^655)  79;  in  Collegiate  School 
curriculum,  180,  199,  273;  gradu- 
ate students  in,  258;  in  Harvard, 
266;  Saybrook  Platform  and,  277- 
86;  in  Yale  College  curriculum, 
{1724-6)  422-3;  second  N.  E. 
generation's  change  in,  100,  139; 
{1721)  392;  Cambridge  Platform 
adopted,  106;  in  Harvard  charter, 
140 ;  see  various  sects 

Thompson,  Anthony,  44 

Tompson,  Benjamin,  poetry  of,  263 

Treat,  Governor  Robert,  148,  184, 
415;  and  Samuel  Andrew,  162 

Treat,  Robert  {Coll.  Sch.  17 18), 
Tutor,    {1724-5)   415 

Turner,  Dr.  Daniel,  of  London,  gift 
of  medical  books  to  Yale  College, 
377,  422;  honorary  degree  of 
M.  D.  given  to,  422 

Tuttle,  William,  College  Street  lot 
of,   325 

Vane,  Sir  Harry,  at  founding  of 
Harvard,  77;  beheaded,  89 

Ward,  Lawrence,  wainscot  chair  of 
owned  by  Abraham  Pierson,  210 
(and  footnote) 

Webb,  Joseph  {Harv.  1684),  sketch 
of,  151;  Trustee,  181,  312,  426; 
at  Trustees'  meetings,  196,  197, 
340;  for  Saybrook  site,  317;  votes 
for  New  Haven  site,  320,  340; 
chosen  Quarterly  Visitor,  {1716) 
323;  on  College  House  building 
committee,  327;  letter  to  Cotton 
Mather  on  Episcopal  movement  in 
College,   {1722)  408 

Wethersfield  (Conn.),  boys  at  Har- 
vard, {to  1690)  119;  description 
of  village,    {1718)    332-3 

Collegiate   School   scholars   sent 


Index 


453 


to,  {1716)  311;  School  at,  318,  323, 
324,  343,  350;  Commencement, 
(7775)363;  scholars  refuse  to  come 
to  New  Haven,  350;  scholars  ar- 
rive in  New  Haven,  {1718)  361; 
General  Assembly  orders  scholars 
to  New  Haven,  363,  370;  School 
continued,  {1719)  369;  scholars 
arrive  in  New  Haven,  {1719)  370, 
and  attempt  to  "unhorse"  Tutor 
Johnson,  (777p)  370-1 ;  return  to, 
371;  end  of  School  at,   (7779)   376 

Wetmore,  James  {Coll.  Sch.  17 14), 
reads  College  books,  {1721)  397; 
minister  at  North  Haven,  402; 
resigns,  416;  leaning  toward  Epis- 
copal Church,  311,  402;  changes 
to  Episcopacy,  403 ;  before  Trus- 
tees, 406-7 ;  stands  by  change  to 
Episcopacy,  409 

Whalley,  Col.  Edward  (Regicide), 
in  New  Haven,  90,  209;  in 
Hadley,  Mass.,  122 

Whitefield  (in  "Great  Awakening"), 
310 

Whitfield,  Rev.  Henry,  minister  in 
Guilford,  20 

Whitman,  Samuel  {Harv.  1696), 
Trustee,  427 

Whittlesey,  Samuel  {Coll.  Sch. 
1705),  Newark  minister,  218;  reads 
College  books,  {1721)  397;  changes 
to  Episcopacy,  403 ;  before  Trus- 
tees, 406-7;  returns  to  Congre- 
gationalism, 410 

Wigglesworth,  Edward  {Harv. 
1710),  declines  Yale  College 
Rectorship,  425 

Wigglesworth,  Michael,  in  New 
Haven,  {1639)  31;  taught  by 
Ezekiel  Cheever,  53 ;  poetry  of, 
269-72 

William  HI,  and  Mass.  Colony,  110; 
and    Conn.    Colony,    281 ;    renews 


Conn,  charter,  115;  and  Harvard, 

140 

Williams,  Elisha  {Harv.  1711), 
sketch  of,  311-2,  331-2,  425;  char- 
acter of,  331-2;  arrives  at 
Wethersfield,  315;  receives  dis- 
satisfied Saybrook  School  scholars, 
(777<$)  311,  318,  323,  (7777)  324, 
(7775)  330,  343,  361,  {1719)  369; 
ends  teaching  of  Wethersfield 
scholars,  {1719)  375-6;  illness  of, 
and  "sanctified,"  {1719)  331; 
enters  ministry  at  Newington, 
(777P)  332,  375;  slaves  of, 
333;  Deputy  to  General  Assembly, 
(7777)  338;  Clerk  of  Lower 
House,  338;  elected  Rector  of  Yale 
College,  (7725)  425;  Assembly 
settles  his  successor  in  church,  427 ; 
Jonathan  Edwards'  friendly  rela- 
tions with,  332,  425-6;  moves  to 
New  Haven  and  into  new  Rector's 
house,  {1726)  427;  installation  as 
Rector  of  Yale  College,  {1726) 
Ml 

Williams,  Nathaniel  {Harv.  1693) y 
declines  Rectorship  of  Yale  Col- 
lege, 425 

Wilson,  John,  minister  at  Boston, 
24,  205;  death  of,  100 

Windsor  (Conn.),  boys  at  Harvard, 
{to  1690)   119 

Winthrop,  Fitz-John,  Governor  of 
Conn.  Colony,  149,  156;  mission 
to  England,  155;  dress,  184,  262; 
interest  in  the  Collegiate  School, 
162,  203,  250;  for  Saybrook  site 
for  Collegiate  School,  314;  death, 
(7707)    281 

Winthrop,  John,  Governor  of  Mass. 
Bay  Colony,  15;  political  theory 
of,  111   (footnote) 

Winthrop,  John,  Jr.,  Governor  of 
Saybrook,    25,    193 ;    Governor    of 


454 


Index 


Conn.  Colony,  {1659-75)  90;  pro- 
claims loyalty  to  Charles  II, 
{1660)  90;  secures  new  and 
broader  Colony  charter,  {1662)  91, 
107;  relation  to  Conn,  absorption 
of  New  Haven,  91-4;  character  of, 
91  (footnote) 
Woodbridge,  Timothy  {Harv.  1675), 
at  Harvard,  119,  122;  ordained  to 
be  minister  at  Hartford,  122; 
sketch  of,  150;  progressive  in 
church-synod  movement,  157,  178, 
278;  ill  in  Boston,  {1701-3)  177-8, 
336;  guest  of  Sewall  and  Increase 
Mather,  177;  probably  agreeable 
to  Sewall  and  Addington's  plan 
for  church-control  of  Collegiate 
School  in  their  charter  draft, 
{1701)  178,  336;  curious  with 
Sewall  about  site,  {1701)  180 
(footnote)  ;  Trustee  named  late, 
181,  312,  426;  farm  of,  191;  first 
attends  Trustees'  meeting,  {1703) 
278 ;  absent  from  Trustees'  meet- 
ings, {170 1 -3)  196,  {17 17)  337, 
{1719)  369;  at  Trustees'  meetings, 
278,  284,  319,  340  fiF. ;  sends 
scholar  to  School,  {1702)  234; 
poetry  of,  264;  for  Hartford  site 
of  Collegiate  School,  201,  313  ff., 
317,  336,  340,  342,  362;  and  Say- 
brook  Platform,  278 ;  eflfort  to  suc- 
ceed Pierpont  as  leader  of  Trus- 
tees, 312,  336;  applies  to  Assembly 
to  remove  School  to  Hartford, 
{1716)  313-4,  316;  opposition  to 
Saybrook  site,  315,  319  flF. ;  oppo- 
sition to  New  Haven  site,  320,  324, 
333  if.;  calls  Hartford  town 
meeting  to  secure  School,  336; 
leader  in  support  of  Wethersfield 
factional  School,  324,  335,  362, 
end  of,  375-6;  slave  owner,  333; 
probably       unsympathetic       with 


Samuel  Andrew,  335;  reasons  for 
site  attitude,  335-6,  370;  holds 
rival  Commencement  at  Wethers- 
field, (1718)  363;  reported  sup- 
port of  student  rebellion  against 
Tutor  Johnson,  {1719)  370-1;  sug- 
gests entering  disaflPected  Yale  stu- 
dents at  Harvard,  {1719)  374;  is 
elected  Deputy  to  Lower  House, 
(1719)  374-5;  attempts  defeat  of 
Saltonstall  for  Governor,  {1719) 
374;  alleged  libel  on  Saltonstall, 
375 ;  excluded  from  Lower  House, 
375 ;  drops  Hartford  opposition  to 
Trustees,  (1719)  375-6;  wife's  gift 
of  bell  to  College,  375;  later  sup- 
port of  College,  375;  offered 
Rectorship  and  declines,  {1722) 
424;  presides  over  Commencement, 
424;  Jonathan  Edwards  on,  150; 
high  character  of,  313,  335,  363 
Woolsey,  President  Theodore  D., 
quoted  on  Episcopal  CI  urch  move- 
ment in  Yale  College,  408 

Yale  College  {1718-26),  see  Colle- 
giate School  {to  1718) ;  name 
changed  to,  {1718)  357,  360;  new 
College  House  opened,  361,  cost 
of,  380;  steward  appointed,  361; 
continuance  of  site  controversy, 
{1718)  362-3  ;  Assembly  orders  to 
Wethersfield  School,  {1718)  363; 
Saybrook  books  brought  to  New 
Haven,  366-7;  final  efforts  by 
Timothy  Woodbridge  to  change 
site,  374;  end  of  fight,  {1719) 
375-6;  student  rebellion  over  Tutor 
Johnson,  {1719)  370-1;  Assembly 
orders  permanent  Rector  elected, 
371-2;  Timothy  Cutler  chosen 
Rector,  372;  end  of  Wethersfield 
School,  {1719)  376;  financial  con- 
dition of,   {1722)   377;  further  ex- 


Index 


455 


pectations  of  Elihu  Yale  aid  de- 
feated, 377-9;  description  of  Col- 
lege environment,  {1722)  383-6; 
Commons  rebellion  of  students, 
{1721)  387;  new  religious  revival 
wanted,  393-5 ;  Episcopalian  move- 
ment result  of  Dummer  books,  396 
ff. ;  Rector  Cutler  and  Tutor 
Browne  "excused,"  {1722)  409; 
decision  to  have  all  future  College 
officers  subscribe  to  Saybrook 
Platform,  409 ;  charter  changes, 
414-5 ;  length  of  year,  420 ;  suc- 
cessful two  years  under  Tutor 
Jonathan  Edwards,  416-25 ;  Col- 
lege laws,  {1726)  420;  religious 
life  of  scholars,  417;  fines,  418; 
eflForts  to  find  permanent  Rector, 
{1725-6)  425;  election  of  Elisha 
Williams,  425;  Trustees  perma- 
nently reunited,  {1726)  427;  con- 
servative future  of  College,  398, 
430;  great  influence  in  American 
growth,  430 

Commencements,  {1724.  ff.)  420, 
student  charges  for,  424 

Curriculum,  {1724-6)  420,  421- 
4;  geometry  and  astronomy  added, 
{1719)  423 ;  theological  tendency 
in,  423 

General,  cultural  lack,  12;  pub- 
lic service  purpose  of,  57;  and  the 
State,  171,  377;  and  Saybrook 
Platform,  285,  430;  name  of,  first 
mentioned  by  Cotton  Mather, 
{1718)  348;  first  bell  given, 
{1719)  375;  "President,"  title  of 
used  for  Rector  Cutler,  376;  Epis- 
copal students  given  no  liberty, 
{^750)  412;  church  services, 
{1721)  401-2  (and  footnote), 
later,  412;  rank  of  students  in 
Catalogue,  421 ;  theology  in  curric- 
ulum,    422-3;      tuition,      {1724-6) 


424;  intellectual  standards  of,  398; 
salaries  of  Tutors,  377;  blue,  first 
mention  of  color,  255,  College 
House  painted,  355,  428;  finances 
of,  377,  380 

Gifts  from  (Governor  Salton- 
stall)  377,  (Tutor  Moss)  377, 
(Dr.  Turner)  377,  422,  (General 
Assembly)    377 

Library,  brought  from  Saybrook, 
361,  364-7;  {of  1718)  365;  Epis- 
copal books  in,  400;  placed  in  new 
College  House,  369;  Dr.  Turner's 
medical  books,  377,  422;  unread, 
{to  1721)  396;  Episcopal  results 
of,  399,  401   ff. 

Rector,  need  of  permanent, 
{1719)  369,  415;  made  a  Trustee, 
415;  efforts  to  select,  {1722-6), 
405,  424-5;  elections  refused  by: 
Timothy  Woodbridge,  424,  Na- 
thaniel Williams,  425,  Eliphalet 
Adams,  425,  Edward  Wiggles- 
worth,  425,  William  Russell,  425; 
Elisha  Williams  elected,  425,  in- 
stalled, 427 

Rector's  House,  need  of,  see  un- 
der Collegiate  School,  {1719)  379; 
finished,  {1725)  427;  description 
of,  427-8 

Scholars,  Wethersfield  set  un- 
ruly, {1719)  370;  rebellion  over 
Tutor  Johnson,  {1719)  370-1,  387; 
Commons  rebellion,  {1721)  387-8; 
life  of  under  Rector  Cutler,  376, 
381;  life  of  under  Tutor  Edwards, 
416-25;  bad  manners  of,  377,  387, 
420;  trouble-makers  expelled,  388; 
{in  1719)  324;  rooms  of  under 
President  Stiles,    {1786)    356 

Trustees,  meet  with  Council  on 
Rectorship,  {1719)  369;  letter  of 
thanks  4o  Elihu  Yale,  377;  expec- 
tation  of   orthodoxy   under   Rector 


456 


Index 


Cutler,  394,  398-400;  worried 
over  Episcopal  movement,  (1^22) 
404;  conference  with  Rector  Cutler 
and  others  over  do.,  405-7;  dismiss 
Rector  Cutler,  409;  adopt  Say- 
brook  Platform  for  Tutors,  409, 
417,  430;  under  charter,  {of  1701) 
'  414,  {1723)  414-S;  Visitors  elected, 
416;  changes  in  personnel,  (/o 
1725)  426-7 

Yale,  David,  of  Boston,  in  London, 
{1637)  19;  in  New  Haven  Colony, 
35,  44 

Yale,  David,  of  Denbighshire, 
Wales,  19 

Yale,  David,  of  North  Haven 
(Conn.),  considered  as  heir  to 
Elihu  Yale's  estate  and  returns  to 
Conn.,  291-2 

Yale,  Elihu,  sketch  of,  291 ;  gift  to 
Collegiate  School,  83,  suggested, 
292-3,     296,     344;     and    Jeremiah 


Dummer's  appeals,  292-3,  296; 
gives  books,  {1714)  301 ;  interest 
in  Oxford,  293 ;  Trustees'  appeal 
to  for  aid  to  build  College  House, 
{1718)  344,  351;  Cotton  Mather's 
appeal  to,  {1718)  347,  351; 
Dummer's  appeals  to,  350-1;  gift 
of  goods,  {1718)  351-3;  small 
interest  of  in  gift,  351,  353 ;  estate 
of,  351;  talk  of  further  gifts, 
(77/9)  377,  378-9;  Trustees'  letter 
of  thanks  to,  377;  worries  over  a 
gift  to  "Dissenters,"  377;  broad 
theological  views  of,  378;  hopes 
Episcopal  literature  will  convert 
Collegiate  School  Trustees,  378, 
400 ;  Samuel  Johnson  on  "found- 
ing" by,  412 ;  portrait  painted  for 
College,  378  (and  footnote)  ;  Zee- 
man  portrait  of,  {1717)  378 ;  death 
of,  (1721)  379 
Yale,  Thomas,  of  New  Haven,  19, 
291 


3^ 


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